


KMOX: The Voice of What's Left of St. Louis, And the Rest of America

by Falcolmreynolds



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: America, Audio drama, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, I Don't Know Where This Is Going, I may have developed a vague idea of where this is going, Libraries, Lore - Freeform, Nonbinary Character, Outsider Perspective, POV Outsider, Post-Apocalypse, Turncoat, Worldbuilding, also american magic, evil mage time!, kade - Freeform, okay there's gods now?, postapocalypse, salt (mineral), there are now cowboys, there have always been cowboys, there's also too many OCs to tag them all so, this is not set in the known world, this is set in the silent world, this is specifically set in america, why? because i know the geography there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2020-12-13 21:49:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 53,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21004697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falcolmreynolds/pseuds/Falcolmreynolds
Summary: A series of radio broadcasts you pick up.Completed.





	1. Broadcast One - Recorded 2 September 2097

We’re all that’s left.

That’s - that’s what was told to me, anyway, I mean. I know it probably isn’t true - it  _ can’t _ be true, not with the whole world out there - but sometimes, when I’m looking out at the fields or the forest and the sky with no more squirrels or planes or anything but distant birds, sometimes it feels like it is.

After the end, things… changed. Of course they did. It was the end, duh. But - but I mean not in the way we expected. We thought there would still be a world out there. Right? After the end? We thought that the world would end and by that I mean we thought that we would end up all going away, but there would still be a world left behind. Just not for us. Not one we could live in anymore.

It was kind of the opposite. We kept going. But the world… we lost it. We built our defenses, and scorched the land, and tried to keep ourselves safe, and little by little - day by day, month by month, year by year - the rest of it just kind of… faded away.

I know it’s still there, because we move, and we learn about it, but though the scenery changes and we hear news occasionally on the radio it doesn’t  _ feel _ like the world is still there. It doesn’t feel like anything exists. It’s just a bunch of meaningless words, a moving picture show, a reel that displays different landscapes while we stay in the same place.

Our world isn’t open anymore. We see it as a series of routes and roads, windows that we peer through, expanses outside our safe zones.

Today is September second, 2097. I’m at the Fort Epiphany outpost in… uh, I think this is southern Illinois? We’re pretty close to the Kentucky border but I’m pretty sure we’re still in Illinois. The outpost moves, so I’m not entirely sure.

If you’re out there, and you’re hearing this, my name is Charlie McAvoy, and I need you to understand that you, listening somewhere else in the world, are not alone.

I’ll tell you everything I can. I hope this works. The outpost started moving again a few days back - we picked up a signal on the radio, and there might be a chance that the old radio station in St. Louis is working, so we’re headed there. That’s one of the old high-power stations, so we might be able to get something out. I don’t know. It’s always just a gamble, anything we do.

At least we’re moving again. Being in one place for too long means we attract things. If we’re on the move, it’s harder for them to pick up our scent. Our weather-witch was working nonstop to keep us hidden for days while we were stopped; she’s finally catching a break, thankfully. Now it’s the engineers’ turns, they have to try and keep the outpost quiet while we move. Not easy. But they, uh, they know what they’re doing.

Marsha’s the one who picked up the signal - uh, Marsha’s one of our oldest residents at the outpost. I don’t know why we call it an outpost, actually, now that I think about it; aren’t those usually, like, stationary? Those kind of, um… they look out in the area surrounding a larger place. This one doesn’t do that. Not anymore anyway. Oh, sorry, right, Marsha. Marsha’s one of the oldest residents here, she works our radio with a couple of others who are learning from her, and she said that the station in St. Louis, if we could get on it, can broadcast to most of the continent. Now  _ that _ could be useful.

When I was a kid, we still kept up communications with the, uh, Blandersville group, but a few years back they stopped responding. The outpost had a vote to see if we would go and try to find them. We didn’t end up doing that. We still don’t know what happened to them, if they all died, or if their radio died, or what. I guess we’ll never know.

We could have gone to check on them. But we didn’t. We had to keep going on our end. We always have to keep going. That’s all we really can do.

Uh, maybe I should give you some background on what’s going on here. We have enough engineers that we might be able to boost the signal - if it still works - to beyond the continent, so - oh, man, I hope you speak the same languages as us. That’s gonna be, uh, not great. If you don’t. We’re gonna have trouble with that.

Whatever. I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it?

Okay. Right. Background. Um, I’m Charlie McAvoy, I’m from the Fort Epiphany outpost and we’re currently in what I’m  _ pretty _ sure is Illinois, which is in the United States of America. I mean, I don’t really think there’s much of that left, but that’s what it was called for a while, so that’s what people know it by. If anybody knows it by anything nowadays.

Geez, I sound like a real downer.

For those of you not familiar with, um, with American cities and stuff, with American geography, that means we’re smack-dab in the midwest of the country, headed hopefully to the west. It shouldn’t take more than, I dunno, a couple weeks if we go at a steady pace? We’re not cars, obviously, but we still travel pretty quick. If everything’s working. And Illinois - I don’t know if you’ve ever been here, but this place is, uh, real flat. Flattest thing I’ve ever seen. The land just goes on forever. There’s a bunch of forest now, obviously, but still some plains left, and I can’t imagine what this must’ve looked like before the end, with cornfields and farms and stuff.

Oh, god, farms. I forgot about farms. Never mind, it’s gonna take longer than a few weeks. There’s going to be just an ungodly amount of farms we have to get by.

You know how Americans - uh, maybe you don’t. Okay, well, way back in the day before the end, Americans had a lot of, uh, they were called factory farms. They just kept a lot of animals in one place to farm them for meat or milk or whatever, and that was terrible and all because of the environment but the important part here is that they, um, they kept all these animals really, really close together. Like, shoulder-to-shoulder in the same building. A lot of these farms were, uh, were for chickens and turkeys, which obviously are reptiles and can’t get the rash illness so they were fine, but more of them were pigs and cows. So, you have literally thousands of really big animals, all crammed together, and then one worker comes in sick with the rash illness, and…

...uh, needless to say, we are not going to have an easy time with this. Some of the biggest amalgamates ever recorded - as far as we know - are in the Midwest, though there was one I think in, uh, in Texas? Another cattle one.

They aren’t  _ super _ dangerous if you stay away from them, because they’re so big they can’t really move, but over time they can sort of, um, ooze across the landscape. That’s why we put our towns on treads. Too many big blobs coming through.

Those big ones can take huge paths out of the forests. A while back one came through the Ohio River and ended up flattening a big chunk of forest and some of a city, beelining for the old coal plant in Cincinnati. I think it took up residence inside. You know, the - you probably don’t know. There’s a coal plant there that was supposed to be a nuclear plant so it has a huge cooling tower that was never properly used. I think the blob’s in there now. It hides from the winter there.

That kind of got away from me there. The point is, it’ll actually take us longer than I thought to get to St. Louis. And the closer we are to old population centers, the worse it is, obviously, because, you know. Of how monsters got created. And there are so many population centers along the rivers. I’ve had a few, uh, I… guess you could call them run-ins with beasts along the rivers. Which I’m in a lot. For, uh, for my job.

I’m a wildlife biologist. Which, uh, that might sound kind of strange, given the current circumstances, but that’s what I do. I was over in the Blue River a little ways back looking at hellbenders. Um, if you don’t know what they are, they’re a type of really big salamander. They’ve gotten, their population has increased a bunch since all the dams in the Ohio River broke down and a bunch of their mammalian predators all died. So that’s cool, I guess. The rash illness did benefit someone. It’s nice to know that even with all of that happening, something is doing okay, even if it’s just a… weird, big fat salamander species.

Okay. The broadcasts aren’t supposed to exceed ten minutes in length - that’s what Marsha told me - so I’m going to cut it here because I’m not sure but I might have already gone over and I don’t want to push my luck any more. God, I hope this reaches someone somewhere.

As we go along I’m going to - ugh, god, no, I’m out of time. I’ll explain later. I promise. Just keep listening on this station, and I swear I’ll tell you more. I’ll tell you all I can. I don’t know if you can contact us back but if you’re getting this, we’re at the place in St. Louis. KMOX. If you can reach us then please, please do. We’ll be listening.

I hope.


	2. Broadcast Two - Recorded 4 September 2097

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh - people are - people are reading this?!

Okay. We’re on our way. Sorry. So the story with me here is that I’m recording these ahead of time, on the trip, and when we reach KMOX, we’re going to upload them and broadcast them one by one. I’ll be, uh, hopefully I’ll be helping do that, and I’ll be -

...sorry, there’s some kind of issue with this. I just got a bunch of static on the recording screen, like, it showed me there was a bunch of interference. Did you hear that? I hope not. I’m sorry if you did. I can’t re-record these because I only have so much power, they’re solar charged and, uh, it’s getting kind of cloudy because it’s the start of autumn. Sorry.

Okay. Right.

It’s me again, Charlie. I should probably - in case someone else is doing these casts, you should know who else is in the outpost family. Family? I guess we count as a family. That’s all we’ve really got, so. Family.

There’s me. Then there’s Marsha - Marsha Songbird. That’s what she calls herself. That’s probably not her original last name, but people don’t even know or remember theirs half the time, so what does it matter? Name yourself whatever you want. There’s no reason to let your ancestors be the ones who represent you. Not when their world is all gone away.

Desiree is one of Marsha’s helpers. She’s learning the ins and outs of our weird radio contraption, so she might be doing these broadcasts if I don’t. Marsha’s other assistant is, uh, that would be Oakley. He’s - um, well, he doesn’t talk a whole lot because he got sick a few years back and it screwed up his throat real bad, permanently, but he’s also immune to the rash illness so he does any reports from outside the town walls. If he joins in you’ll know.

Okay. That’s us. The outpost - uh, Fort Epiphany outpost, if you didn’t catch that in the first recording. Uh, first broadcast. Well, recording for me, broadcast for you. What was I saying? The outpost. We have a few engineers who keep us running - those are Santana, Mads, um… Leo, Fable, and Gal. We have our weather-witch, Asya, and then there’s a few families. I could list them all out but I think that would take too long and there’s probably better things to do. 

Okay. If you’re not from this part of the country, you might not totally get what I mean by, uh, by engineers. I keep forgetting this isn’t something people might know about. So, we have a weather-witch, right, Asya, and you’re probably familiar at least with that concept, right? She makes, um, she changes the weather. Wind and rain and stuff. She uses that to keep us safe, to dampen our scents and stuff so that we don’t get detected by beasts and trolls.

I want to make a note on those names. I don’t know why we call them that. Why do we use those words? Did we get them from somewhere? Do you use those words? Are we using the same words to describe the same monsters? When I say beast I mean, like, the little monsters, the ones that are kind of just a tiny little thing that scuttles around and bites or whatever. Trolls are worse, they’re the uh… the sort of big messes of limbs and stuff all smashed together. Giants are the worst of all, they’re huge, and you usually can’t tell what parts of them were beforehand. They’re massive. Those are the ones we just call blobs, ‘cause they’re so big they aren’t really shaped like anything anymore. Giants and trolls are both also called amalgamates. But that’s really long so most people just say blobs.

Anyway yes, sorry, Aysa and the witchcraft. She keeps us safe while staying put. And while on the move, I guess, but that’s more up to the engineers.

The engineers are responsible for moving Fort Epiphany Outpost. We’re one of the American towns that wanders. We have, um… we have treads underneath that carry us over a lot of different terrain, and if the terrain is too varied for the treads the engineers use the legs, which is a lot more work for them but it lets us cross rivers and stuff without breaking.

Some towns, like ours, move. A lot. We have to, to keep out of the way of the big amalgamates. I think I mentioned them before, how they kind of ooze their way through the land. They don’t target us, but they’re so big it’s easy to get run over if you don’t get out of their path in time.

Anyway, the engineers keep us going, and they also keep the town quiet. Sound attracts monsters, you know. So does smoke, which sometimes goes up from the engines if the fuel put in them is particularly weird.

The engines can burn… uh, most things. That’s part of how they work. The engineers do that to them.

There’s a lot of names for the kind of stuff engineers can do, like mech magic or industrial magic or whatever. They just call it engineering. I don’t know any engineers who  _ can’t _ do it. I think it’s sort of a prerequisite for being a mechanic.

I’m just a biologist. I don’t have any of the important magics like engineers do. But I know enough about them to sort of explain what they’re like.

The cities aren’t like cars. Or tanks. They’re… it’s almost like they’re alive, really, but not like animals are. Obviously. It’s not the same, but the machines that they make are… more than just - more than just a pulley or a stove or a bicycle. They adapt and respond, like an animal. We give them names and stuff, they have personalities. It’s kind of strange. Some engineers make pets for people too. I could probably get one and tell you more about it if you want. Um, I might do that on purpose, just so you can learn about what we do here.

Yeah, I’ll get that done. I’ll ask them more about it too, so I can tell you more - oh, shoot. The time’s running out on this recording. Listen, I’ll get back to you on this.

As always, I’m Charlie McAvoy, and this has been, uh, this has been… I don’t have a name for this. But this has been me, talking to you, somewhere out there.

If you can get back to us, well, we’ll be listening. Good luck.


	3. Broadcast Three - Recorded September 8 2097

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys who are reading and commenting? you are my heroes. I don't know where you came from but I love you and appreciate your presence, feedback, and attention more than you realize. You are the greatest

Alright, hello again; it’s me, Charlie, I’m back. Today is, uh… today is September 8th, 2097. It’s been a few days, um, since the last update that I’ve recorded, and there’s - there’s a _ reason _ for that, I promise, and I will go ahead and explain all that to you.

So, uh, this requires a little bit of background. You remember I’m a wildlife biologist. I mean, if you’ve listened to the previous broadcasts you are. If you haven’t, uh, I’m Charlie McAvoy, and I’m a wildlife biologist. Okay. Yes. Now. Why am I that, of all things? Uh, well, that’s partially because I, um - there aren’t a whole lot of people in America who don’t have some kind of weird ability. There’s just, like, a _ lot _ of variety.

I’m capable of… it’s not very impressive, but I can interact with animals, and calm them so I can handle them. Servant of the Dove or whatever you wanna call it. It’s an ability that a lot of people had before the end, though usually more, um… more latent than mine. Anyway, I - my abilities are most useful for, I guess, for lack of anything else to do, getting my hands on animals and, um… getting a good look at them. I do it to measure populations. I use it on pets, sometimes, if they’re being rowdy, or on work animals if people have them, but we don’t really use work animals if we can avoid it. It’s way too dangerous. 

It’s important to note that it doesn’t - oh, you know, I’m betting other people in the world have this kinda power. Though it does seem to be kind of… religious? So maybe not. Regardless, the point is, what I was saying was uh… it does not work on beasts. This has been tried before, and it’ll probably be tried again, and it won’t work that time either. Beasts aren’t animals. Anymore. Well, I mean, some cases could be made for dog beasts, I guess. Even with that, though, they don’t - they’re not the same, and they won’t be the same. Ever.

Uh, okay, so, I know I said I was going to see if I could get some kind of engineered assistant from the mechanics - um, mechanics of Fort Epiphany Outpost, that’s where I am, if you’ve not got the earlier broadcasts - uh, but, that kind of isn’t going to work now. Partly just because that’s some resources that they don’t have, and partly because, um, I found a bird.

So, here’s a bit of what I can do. I was in a river - you know, just, in a river, that’s where I do some of my best work - and I heard a ruckus and there was a vulture trapped in an old plastic net on the riverbank, so I grabbed it. I think it came down to the riverbank to get at something that was mostly dead. There's a lot of that here. Um, she’s got a broken wing.

Birds of prey are having, uh… kind of a rough time. A lot of small mammal species they used for prey are, if not extinct, then severely depleted. So a lot of them have had to seek reptiles for sustenance. Lizards, and stuff. I know that the desert-hunting birds are already used to that but the deciduous forest birds aren’t so much.

Fortunately, small mammals breed _ really _ fast. So while a lot of them die because it’s difficult to stop the spread across the landscape, a lot more survive to breed. This does mean there are a _ lot _ of really small beasts, but they seem to be willing to attack each other sometimes, and that keeps the population down.

Vultures are kind of a different matter; they don't need to hunt, just eat dead things, so now that they're not being hit on highways like they were a century ago it's, uh, not - not a big issue for them to find stuff to eat. They're immune to the infection anyway but they're the only thing I know that'll willingly just eat beasts. They like dead stuff. They don't mind - they don't mind, um, if something they want to consume is still, uh, a little bit alive. In the weird infected way. If you can consider anything that died to the rash illness 'alive.'

Wait, hold on...

...okay, there we go again. This recorder is just an ancient chunk of technology, it’s taken its fair share of hits. The thing keeps wigging out and giving me static. I hope that isn’t too much of an issue for you. If it is, again, I’m - I’m really sorry.

Oh, boy, So again you might hear the background noise of the Fort moving. You might also hear the bird if she decides to speak up. I, um, took the bird. She’s mine now, I guess? That feels rude to say, but also, I’ve saved her life, and when she’s around me I can sort of… well, I’m not going to say communicate with her. Because that’s - that’s dumb. That’s not how this works. Birds aren’t that smart. But I can, uh, control her.

For the most part. She’s bitten me, like, seven times. Which is fine! Birds can’t really interact with the world outside of using their beaks, so, like, what _ else _ is she gonna do, right?

Anyway, I plan on fixing her up and then she can help us scout. Getting my hands on a bird was a real stroke of luck. That’s not easy to do, because it’s really hard to, um, raise them from eggs when you live in a mobile fortress outpost with, like, twenty-five other people and no steady supply of fresh mice. Or dead mice. But like if I'm feeding a bird I'm not gonna let food sit around and get a little nasty before letting my bird have it if I don't have to. There's no point in taking chances and they like fresh carrion better than long-dead half-rotted stuff anyway, I think? At the very least I don't think they prefer the rotted goop more.

The bird's a turkey vulture. So she has a really good sense of smell. That’ll be useful in the future I think if I can get her wing fixed. Especially because we’re in prime farm territory now.

Another thing that happened is we have been, uh… slowed down a little bit. Just a little bit. There was a small attack right as we entered farm territory that damaged one of the treads, and we had to, um… get rid of the offending monster and then fix the tread. Getting rid of the monster was the hard part, and we had to, uh, burn it, of course. Which led to - there was a small forest fire. Which is fine, we contained it, and Aysa called up an emergency thunderstorm to dampen it down after we realized it was getting out of hand. The problem with _ that _ is that, uh, she is now out for a little bit, so we have to go very slowly and very quietly. If we make too much smoke it’s gonna cause problems, and if we make too much noise it’s gonna cause problems, and yada yada yada.

The troll we were attacked by was, uh… well, it was probably some deer once, from the looks of it? There were deer _ in _ it, that’s for sure. It had antlers. It also had hands, so there were people too, which is always a little bit distressing. I mean, we all know that that’s what happened to them, but still. There’s a difference between… there’s a difference, really, between knowing that people who died to the rash illness sometimes got, uh, altered, and, uh, seeing a human skull come flying at your face on the end of something’s tentacle arm. And the difference is, uh, pretty, pretty stark. Is one way to put that.

There were deer in it once and also people. That’s about all I could gather from the short period of time I saw it, which to be honest I wish had been even shorter, perhaps even nonexistent. Some people study the amalgamates. I do not, and I do not _ want _ to, and I do not _ like _ them and knowing that they exist, and exist specifically in close proximity to me.

Update on our whole, uh, situation aside from that though. We’re _ deep _ in southern Illinois now, and - maybe I misled you a little bit on what exactly this place is like. I mentioned farms, yeah, but while Illinois is very flat it also hasn’t been altered by humans since 2015 so the forests have gotten back to their original state over the past most-of-a-century.

The best option we have is to follow the old highways. They were a little better maintained than most landscapes, because, well, people needed to travel on them. But also because they were upkept for as long as they could be by the people that used them - caravans, mostly, military caravans and, uh, and commercial ones too. Though of course air travel was the safest, because there’s a very small chance of encountering beasts while flying. Usually bat-beasts get too big to fly around, so there’s nothing really up there in the sky that can cause problems…

Funny thing about bats. Really funny thing. A lot of them went extinct because of the rash illness. And then some of them just didn’t. They’re immune to it. Especially some of the more southern species. Isn’t that weird? The ones that _ are _ vulnerable are nightmarish, because the only thing worse than a beast is a beast that can fly, but the rest are just… fine.

They still die to cave fungus, but at least they aren’t turning into mutated zombies.

Bats and cats. I don’t know. There’s just something about certain animals that makes them… immune. I’ve never understood that. Cats have always been regarded as kind of… holy, sort of. Or unholy, depending on your opinions. Some people don’t like ‘em. Whatever your opinions are they don’t, uh, they don’t get the rash illness.

Which, from a wildlife biologist standpoint, was really kind of disastrous for, um, for every small mammal species in North America, because wow are they all just kind of gone now. Whatever populations avoid getting devastated by the rash illness end up - end up getting eaten by cats! There’s no winning for them.

Birds are fine. I mean, not fine from cats. But fine from the illness. I think I’ve mentioned this already? On account of their being reptiles, of course. Um, if you didn’t - if you didn’t know that yet, well, surprise! That’s why birds don’t get it. Because they aren’t mammals, and it only affects mammals.

So, a roundabout explanation, I guess, of why my bird didn’t die to the wound in her wing, and why she’ll be a useful companion.

Um, I started this one with a point. What was the point. I… Oh! Right! I was going to explain why it’s been a little longer than I intended.

So, I found the bird, in the river, and, uh… while I was there, I found - well, I guess it found me. But it was a troll, a decently sized one, all sludgy on the riverbank.

I’m not - uh, we don’t know if I’m immune or not. To - to the rash illness. You know, we don’t have, uh, we don’t really have much in the way of testing facilities here, not in outlier towns, and we sure aren’t going to try and get me bit to find out by trial and error. So I just do my work and hope I don’t get killed. We have scouts who help us watch out for each other while we’re out, but I only had one - uh, Alexandre, they’re… I guess you could call them a soldier? Not like we’re part of any kind of army. But they fight, and that’s what they do best. They have a gun, is what I’m saying. So they can, uh… so they can get rid of things like beasts and trolls at, at range, without getting up in the messy business.

And if they _ do _ have to get up in the messy business - which they will do, to, uh, to great effect - they’re immune, so they’re fine. They’re pretty neat. As a person. Very, um… you know, that’s really… not the point.

Troll on the riverbank. Alexandre was there to keep an eye on me or - or something. I don’t know why I said or something. They were definitely there to keep me safe. I guess it was their - if anyone who’s not a combat specialist has to leave the outpost for whatever reason, they get a specialist who comes with them. Even specialists go in pairs, because it’s never safe to go alone. So I had to have someone with me, to help. I’m not a fighter myself; I work with animals, not weaponry. Uh, living flesh animals. Not constructs.

Alexandre spotted it first and had to get my attention from the riverbank, and by the time the, uh, the troll got up and started after us, we were out of the river already and headed back to the outpost. But it followed us, and then its scent trail got followed by a few others, and um, long story short we tried to take an overpass we thought was whole but it was wrecked so we had to fight our way back down to the ground level instead of sending the entire town off a cliff and destroying it.

Fort Epiphany Outpost is… not very agile. It could be a lot better, and we wish it were, but when it was first designed it was designed as a circular-slash-ovular treaded rolling settlement, not a climbing one, so, uh… not a whole lot we can do to change that now.

Remind me to talk about that later. Uh, I don’t know why I said that; you super definitely aren’t going to hear this between now and the next time I record one of these broadcasts. That really doesn’t make any sense. I’ll write a note down for myself and maybe I’ll remember that…?

We had to fight our way back down to ground level and _ fortunately _ there wasn’t a LOT going on, just some trolls. Not a whole lot of problems there. They weren’t the thing that slowed us down, that was later. But it was because of these guys that we made so much noise, and I guess - leading us back to the first thing I mentioned, about the slowdown, and how I’d explain that - I guess our ruckus out there attracted the real big troll that got us in farm territory? I think we threw up a little too much smoke running the outpost harder than we should have. The mechanics weren’t happy about that.

Alexandre was, uh, _ not _ pleased by this whole thing. I think they blame me for it, which I suppose is fair, since I did kind of cause a huge fuss trying to pick up a bird who hissed at me a lot and also threw up on my arm and then woke the first beast up. But, uh, nobody’s hurt, we’re just a little delayed.

Thankfully.

It could’ve been a lot worse. I guess… it’s so difficult to tell which areas are more dangerous and which are less. A lot of places in the States were -

Oh, shoot. I’m running out of time again. I really have to get better at pacing these out. Okay, I’ll get back and talk about the scorch zones next time, I promise. If you’re an American and already know all of this, uh, I’m very sorry.

Okay. Right. I’ll record another one in just a few days, I’m hoping. I’ll try not to go the entire week without some more updates on the situation and stuff here in the Midwest.

To you out there, if you’re hearing this: I hope you’re doing okay. I really am. If you’re getting these, know that you, out there, are not alone.

I’m Charlie McAvoy, and I wish you the best of luck.


	4. Broadcast Four - Recorded September 10 2097

It’s been a weird two days, I gotta tell you that. I stopped my last recording just in time for all the power in the outpost to die, and then we sit in one place for two days for diagnosis and repair and had to try not to get attacked the entire time. Also, a meteor fell in a field close enough that we could go and recover it. Also, our scouts found a farm-house that was probably upkept as little as five or six years ago, and we have no idea how that happened, but its cornfield did give a really good idea of what the Midwest used to look like. I wish I could show you, but, uh, unfortunately radio is not a, not a medium conducive to such ventures.

I’m Charlie McAvoy, recording somewhere in southern Illinois on my way to St. Louis.

Weird thing about our sitting in one place, though. A couple weird things actually.

One, we saw an aurora. I’ve never seen an aur - uhhhh, no, that’s not true. I’ve seen one once before, but it was just some flashing lights over the sky, like an electrical short, but flat and looking more like lightning. But obviously there is no lightning on a purely clear night. This was a more classic aurora, like the ones you’re supposed to get up north, colors and lights and everything all beautiful and mixed together. I have no idea why we saw it. We super are… not supposed to see that kind of thing. I’m pretty sure, anyway.

Two, we haven’t seen any beasts or trolls for the entire two days we’ve been sitting still. Once we saw one of the giant blobs off in the distance, but it stayed way far from us and really didn’t move other than to sludge its way out of sight, so.

Guess we’ve just been really, really lucky.

Okay, I’ve got some notes that I rolled up and stuffed inside the recorder case. I don’t remember what these were referring to? So hopefully I was clear…

‘Talk about treads and legs.’ That probably has something to do with town shapes, right? I think that’s right. Um, Fort Epiphany Outpost is a partly circular, partly ovular -... I guess it would just be ovular, huh? If it’s ovular it is by definition not a circle. Because - because those aren’t the same shape. You know, a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle’s not a square.

Um. Right. Fort Epiphany Outpost. It’s an ovular treaded settlement, which means we run primarily by keeping the ground level of the settlement flat and steady while the treads take, um, roll over anything that isn’t uniform and conform to the shape to keep the settlement from jostling around. Ours is really small, so it still gets really, uh, really bumpy. But when the legs are out it’s way worse; then it’s jolting all over the place.

Settlements that only have legs can climb up and down cliffs if they’re strong enough and well put-together. Like a... large metal bug of a type. I don’t know how the houses - uh, how the like… you know, where people live? I don’t know if they count as houses. Dwellings? I don’t know how they stay neat and organized if the town is climbing everywhere. Maybe it’s like a space home and everything’s tethered down in case gravity shifts.

So that’s - that’s the different types of towns. Oh, and there’s also floating ones. I forgot about those.

In the midwest, we have to stay away from the big amalgamates. I’ve told you about those already. We realized that the best way to get out of danger was, well, to get out of it. Towns like mine got up and moved, but a couple of them, um, took to the air. I mean, the safest place to be is where they can’t _ possibly _ reach you. Floating towns are pretty dangerous because storms do really terrible things to them, so they have to go to ground when there’s too much weather, but they can travel really easily, so that’s - that’s a pretty big upside. None of the problems we have like how to get across rivers. But they do struggle with, uh… turbulence.

...okay, moving on.

The other note I have written down here is “scorch zones.” I guess it would be kind of silly not to mention them.

There are still, um, still some cities left in the States. Not really a lot - they keep getting outbreaks in them, and there’s not a whole lot that can be done about that, since, um, there’s not much in the way of natural barriers through the continental United States aside from like. Rivers. But a few strongholds still exist. Big walled cities, with scorch zones around them. It’s kind of weird; the cities that were considered the most defensible weren’t, um… the ones that really survived. Like, the big mountaintop cities. It’s the flat-lands ones that lived, or best off, the ones on hills. Not mountains. Animals can climb mountains. Trolls and beasts can climb _ mountains. _ But if you have only a big flat space, you can see anything coming, and you can kill it before it gets to you.

That’s the purpose of the scorch zones. Flatlands cities do them most effectively. You build a giant wall around your city, you net it in on top to stop any bat-beasts, and then you install flamethrowers around the entire city and burn anything and everything that comes within, uh, let’s say, like, between ten and five hundred feet.

There are some old photographs we have in the Outpost from right after the end, and they show the walls going up and then the um. The big ring of black around them. It looks awful but the people inside are safe. Non-immune populations need those. The walls around a scorch city are, um they go down into the ground a pretty far ways so stuff can’t dig under them; all the way through the soil and into the rock beneath. They don’t want _ anything _ getting in that shouldn’t.

And it usually doesn’t, so, success? Um, keyword usually. I remember it was a story - I mean, I - I wasn’t alive for this, obviously. But Marsha told me, since she heard it happen, on the radio. One of the cities - um, it used to be called… Greenville, in South Carolina. It was a walled city, and about, uh… as Marsha put it, probably about thirty, thirty-three-ish years ago? About thirty-three years ago or something - I’m not totally certain of the date off the top of my head - um, Greenville got breached. I don’t remember how. But Marsha remembers it was an absolute disaster. We still don’t know how, but she remembers there being emergency broadcasts, at first requesting help, and then later putting out warnings telling people to stay away from Greenville.

...static again. That happens a lot. I really hope that isn’t coming out badly.

How am I doing on time? Um… oh, I’ve got a few minutes still.

Greenville isn’t - um, I think it’s not an isolated case. I’ve heard stories from other people - over the radio, or just in person, when we’ve met travelers - I’ve heard stories from other people that this has happened to cities before. A few times, it’s almost been like the beasts coordinate their attacks. That doesn’t make sense really - it never has, because, uh, beasts and trolls are horrible little monsters and they don’t have minds or anything, just instincts. And like, I mean, I know people have theorized before that they still do have minds, but, um, we haven’t - we haven’t gotten any evidence of that. At all.

At all.

To the cults of people out there who think that people are still alive inside the trolls: stop. You’re - it’s not true. And you’re _ endangering _ other people with -

...hold on, let me, uh, let me backstory detail this one a little bit.

I’m not sure if you have this where you are. But there was, um… for a while there was a trend here in the States - I think, I don’t think anyone’s done it in a long while - of, uh… of keeping the thing that a person turned into after dying to the rash illness. I mean the troll. People kept trolls. In enclosures. In their houses.

If that sounds insane, well, like, yeah, it - it is. It’s dangerous. But there were stories about people who had the troll of Great-Aunt Jemima or - or whatever, and they thought they could communicate with them, or something. That they were peaceful. I mean needless to say this _ didn’t go so well _ for them. Uh, also, pets. People kept pets. I’m not sure if they fully understood, um, how the, how the rash illness spread? Like, through the air? Apparently not. But it just led to more outbreaks.

Don’t assume a troll has any semblance of a personality left. It doesn’t. It never does, and it never will.

Oh - oh, no, sorry, no, I’m not - sshhh, it’s alright, it’s okay.

Sorry. I, uh, if I get too heated it upsets the bird. She didn’t like that. She’s a real sweetheart, honestly, and she’s only bitten me a few more times, and only in a friendly way. Not like, a hurt bite. Like a friendly interact bite. I know this sounds like I’m making it up because I, uh, because I want the bird to like me, but I actually do know that that’s true. She’s such a good bird.

She’s obviously not able to fly yet, but, uh, we’ll get there. We’ll get there. At least she’s not choosy about her food. We, um… made a trap out of some scrap that was around and have been catching mice and rodents for her. Caught a tiny beast the other day, which was terrifying, but she, uh, ate that too. Apparently she just does that. She just… will do that.

I guess vultures can just do that. It certainly hasn’t hurt her. She can’t be infected, so… I… I guess that’s just fine?

I mean, I know vultures are immune to most sicknesses because they… eat carrion. But I didn’t expect them to be willing to eat rash illness affected monsters.

Maybe we ought to have more vultures. I mean, I have noticed that over time the populations of vultures have increased - there are definitely a lot more than there were at the advent of the, of the illness, when their populations were on the decline due to urbanization and stuff. Uh, that’s happened with a lot of native animal populations. In the States, anyway. I don’t - I don’t know about the rest of the world. But with the reclamation of natural areas, the animal populations have rebounded.

Um, many of them. Mammals are… not doing so well. They haven’t been, for a really long time. The faster-breeding ones are doing better than large mammals, but there’s some truly terrifying sh - stuff out there.

Okay, time check… aaand I’m running out. I’ll record again soon when we have enough power for it. Hopefully we’ll be heading a little further north soon, and ideally the weather will get cold and we’ll have less trouble with the, with trolls and giants, as they hunker down for the winter.

The recorder’s running low. I gotta wrap this up.

Hoping now that, um, I’m really hoping these casts get out. And I hope that you, out there, are doing alright.

I’m Charlie McAvoy, and I hope that you know, out there, that you are not alone. Good luck.


	5. Broadcast Five - Recorded September 15, 2097

The weather has taken a turn for the worse. Well, better and worse both. The weather patterns of the world are, um… let’s call them unpredictable? It’s autumn, which means we could get thunderstorms, heat waves, or snow flurries, depending on the day. Not in that order.

The weather doesn’t affect our progress too much. We’re a whole town. But sometimes it affects, you know, other people who are trying to move around. Sometimes it can be bad. Sometimes it can be good. And then sometimes the weather isn’t natural at all and it’s because you made it and then your storm-witch almost kills thirteen people.

Today is September 15th. I’m Charlie McAvoy, recording somewhere in the Midwest, on my way to St Louis.

Aysa’s good. She’s _ great. _ She’s amazing! And it is not her fault what happened. It turned out okay, so there’s nothing to, to worry about, but uh… we did have a little bit of a, um… mishap.

We were heading across an open meadow when one of our scouts picked up a, um… signature, I guess? I don’t know how the scouts feel stuff, I just know that they do. But they got a, a vibe, sort of, of some approaching danger, so Aysa whipped up a freak thunderstorm to keep us safe.

Turns out that, uh, that was a mistake. We almost screwed over a band of wild riders, and only noticed we did it when their outrider flagged us down to ask for help.

Uh, the - in case you’ve never heard of them, and maybe you haven’t? I feel like they might be a uniquely American thing. Um, in case you’ve never heard of them, wild riders are, uh… they’re groups of folks on horseback who just kind of travel around. They do odd jobs for people and hunt down beasts. On horseback. Now after a whole lot of really selective breeding most of their animals are immune, so they have less to worry about than you might think, but it’s still real dangerous.

They, um, usually know what they’re doing. Usually. A lot of wild rider bands have been together for ages and are like, a family or something. Wild riders meet up all the time too to sort of… communicate, swap stories and stuff, I guess? It’s not a thing towns like the Outpost get involved in.

So this band’s outrider flagged us down and said they were being pursued by a small group of beasts, and that the rain really messed them up, so we, uh… we tried to divert them as best as we could. The rest of the band showed up, and a couple of them looked injured, but none of the horses were down, so that’s good.

To be clear, they were - they were _ running _ from the beasts. It wasn’t rot jockey bait, so we don’t - we don’t have to worry about _ that _ idiocy. This band - I think they call themselves, um, I think they said they were called Midwestern Dynamite? - doesn’t have anybody who’s into… that. Which, I mean, it’s unfair to assume that any band of wild riders just _ has _ a rot jockey, because that’s, probably some kind of um, stereotype, but. You know. You do often, um… find them with wild riders. Because that’s the easiest way to go get beasts!

Uh, maybe you don’t know about rot jockeys. Um… Okay. So - I feel like this might be an American thing, but like, honestly, I don’t know - so rot jockeys are, uh… it’s a term for people who find beasts and try to ride them.

Like, I know that sounds stupid. Because it is stupid. It - it really, really is. But what do you expect, I mean, people are going to do dumb things all the time. Rot jockeys know what they’re getting into, they know how _ dangerous _ it is to attempt. I’m sure we’ve all seen someone brutally mauled to death by a beast.

...okay, well, maybe all of us haven’t seen that. Um, never mind.

Listen, the point is, they know what’s, uh, they usually know what they’re risking, and they still risk it, and it’s really dangerous for _ other _ people around. So I’m glad there aren’t any here.

Anyway, um, the Dynamite group were still getting chased, so Alexandre stepped out there and lent a hand. Uh… most people - most people in the world know how to fight. But Alexandre… is made for it. They - they… I told you I was a servant of the Dove, and like, I am, I guess, to a certain extent. Not - not in a way . But they’re of the _ Hawk. _ And it _ shows. _ It’s… I don’t even know how to explain it. Do you - if you’re not American, do you have gods of war? Do you have a god that fights and hunts and kills? That’s the Hawk. Alexandre embodies that. They are the penultimate example of _ that. _ You can’t get any better than _ what they are. _

Ahem. Uh… I don’t remember if I ever described the whole, uh, Hawk and Dove thing. It’s not really - it’s not like, it isn’t a - I wouldn’t call it a _ religion _ exactly, it’s more like just a - just a way to classify people. Just a way to sort of define people as a certain, um, define people as acting a certain way, usually. It’s not like a - people don’t, like, _ worship _ these. That’s - well, I mean, some people definitely do. There’s a lot of people who exist. But most people don’t. I think.

Basically, those of the _ Dove _ are better at, uh, peaceful stuff. Like working with animals. Like I do. But it’s not - it’s not _ because _ of the Dove, it’s just that because of what I can do I’m more closely associated with the Dove. It’s not - it’s not a conscious choice I’ve made or anything.

The Hawk is for, um… for fighters. Like Alexandre. People who can just keep going no matter what and fight anything and use their strength and force to do what they want.

That’s… about it. Those are the Hawk and the Dove. I don’t really - I mean, that’s very obviously not the only categories that exist, but most people don’t bother going into anything else, and I’ve never really heard much about, um… about any of the other ones. Just the Hawk and the Dove. My parents told me about them, though not, uh, not a whole lot. My father served the Dove. Like me. He was the, uh… the animal handler for the Outpost before I was. Before I became it? I’m not sure on my wording there.

Oh, speaking of, um, of animals, my bird! She’s healing pretty well. It’s been a week and she’s already much calmer and happier. Um, her break was pretty minimal, as it turns out; it was in the sort of middle bone, but it was just a fracture, not a real big problem. I wrapped it up pretty well and it’s already not causing her pain.

A lot of people who, uh, who handle animals have this kind of air around them. Things heal faster if I’m taking care of them. Not, like, magically fast, just kind of a little bit faster. Like they want to or something? That’s kind of a silly thought. It’s bones. Bones don’t want anything.

...oh, right, the wild riders. I was talking about the wild riders. And then Alexandre. Um, they, Alexandre lent them a hand, with their rifle and bayonet and just, like, fists. There were only a few other beasts, but once those were taken care of, the riders asked if they could, uh, rest with us. They didn’t know if anything else had tracked them and figured they’d be safer if they could hang around us for a little bit, which is totally fine. Since they’re going to be resting with us they’re also serving as outriders for the town so we’ll have a way better chance of detecting any potential dangers and it’ll give our, um, our _ one scout _ kind of a break in her duties, which is nice. This just happened so I haven’t really had a, uh, a chance to talk to them yet, and I really want to. I don’t - I don’t think that being a wild rider is a safe idea, like literally at all, but that doesn’t mean I’m not curious about - Oh, maybe I can record part of my conversation!

If I want to record that I’m going to have to stop this recording right now. The battery life on this thing is getting worse; it barely stays on at all, and needs a ton of time to charge. I guess we just thought it was usable because it hadn’t been touched in years and hadn’t had a chance to degrade. I don’t know if you’ve been hearing it, but I keep getting little spikes of static in the recording display; the microphone must be broken inside, making awful sounds when it moves or something. Maybe one of the mechanics can fix it.

That’s not, uh, that’s not really their - really their style, exactly, though? They’re more about the, um… actual machines, not fiddly little… electric stuff. Still, I can try. It might make it better for you.

Okay, shutting this off to try and catch some of the later conversation. I’ll - I guess, oh no, that’ll be stored as a separate file. Okay, I’ll end this here then, and try to get… I guess it would be an interview? _ That’s _ weird. I’ll try and get that later. Uh, for you - stay tuned, and I’ll broadcast that little, um, the talk next? Yeah!

Conserving power time. Let’s roll. Thanks for listening. I’m Charlie McAvoy, and I hope that you know, out there, that you are not alone. Good luck.


	6. Broadcast Five-point-five - Recorded September 15, 2097

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The format of this one is a little different from the previous chapters. Let me know what you think of it, I might use this one later as it allows for a whole bunch of different information to be conveyed compared to the monologue chapters.  
You guys are the best, thank you for reading!

CHARLIE: Hey!

UNKNOWN VOICE (FEMALE): Oh, well, hello, there.

C: Hey, I was - okay, um, I can explain this. This is - uhhhh…

UVF: (amused) Take your time.

C: (flustered) Uhhhhh, the Outpost is on our way to a radio station where we hope to broadcast some stuff to the, to the rest of the world, and I was wondering if you’d - if you’d be willing to be recorded? For that?

UVF: (flattered) Well, sure! I don’t see why not. Is that your little recorder there?

C: This? Yeah, it, uh… it’s a little bit bulky, but it works! Mostly.

UVF: Adorable. Such a weird-lookin’ little thing. Alright, well, what do you wanna know?

C: So you’re a wild rider -

UVF: Midwestern Dynamite, babe!

C: - and, um, KMOX can broadcast all around the world, so I’m wondering - I’m curious as to how you would, uh, explain your group to - to people in other nations, maybe? Oh, shoot, you should probably introduce yourself.

UVF: That’d be good, yeah, wouldn’t it? (laughter) I’m Joey, or if’n you’re wanting my whole name, Josephine leBlanc, though they call me Hawkeye when we’re out and about.

C: Oh, wow, that - that’s a, that’s a name alright.

JOEY: Isn’t it? Believe it or not, it’s the same one I was born with! Though I got Hawkeye ‘cause I’m the best shot in the band, by far. Don’t let Emmy tell you anything different, he’s just stinging over that time I beat him in a target contest.

C: So - so that, what do you do in your band? Do you have, like, an assigned role?

J: Not so much? Mostly I keep a lookout ‘cause I’m good at seeing real far away. I’m pretty good at spotting movement even when we’re riding - something about how you move your head while on the horse - and nobody else has quite the knack for it that I do.

C: Are you going to be one of the outriders who helps us out over the next few days?

J: Sure am! Give your scout a little break. She looks pretty tired, haha!

C: Oh, she’s not - um, she’s not actually  _ our _ scout, we’re… borrowing her.

J: That so? From where?

C: Another town. She knows she can go find them any time she wants, but she’s staying to help us since we don’t really have protections of our own.

J: Aw, that’s nice of her. Why are y’all out here on your own with nothing helping you? Was it always like that?

C: ...no.

C: We used to have cats, when someone could handle them. They all wandered off a while back.

J: Well, don’t you have that same sorta animal-knowing that most handlers do? You could probably get em back, right? You got that lovely bird of yours.

C: I… no. I can’t.

(There is a lengthy pause here; background clattering noises can be heard, along with a rhythmic thudding sound like a running engine. There’s a faint fuzz of underlying static as well.)

C: I don’t... have that kind of skill. The bird is the best I can do.

J: (apologetic) Aw, darlin, I didn’t mean to make you feel sad. Here, I bet that if you keep practicing at it you’ll get much better!

C: Do you guys have any mages with you? Is that a thing you do?

J: No, not as far as I can tell. Nobody like you or your Aysa.

C: I can barely do anything, so, uh, you - you might have someone like me. But Aysa - no, yeah, Aysa’s one of a kind.

J: Almighty, that storm she brought down on us! I thought we were all gonna die, I really did. You should’ve seen how the trolls slipped and slid, though! Worse than our horses did. Those little critters aren’t used to getting caught out in the rain like that! (laughter)

(loud static chip)

C: - pretty used to seeing beasts around, then?

J: All the time. The horses ain’t exactly… stealthy, I’d say? Nor are we. (soft laughter)

C: Yeah, neither is, uh, the town. We… get a lot of crap from the surrounding areas.

J: I’ll bet! We at least can be a li’l maneuverable. You have to just keep on going in whatever direction you’re pointed, and you need a half mile to turn around completely.

C: (regretfully) Yeah, it’s - it’s not ideal.

J: Nah, but you get safety in this big tin can.

C: Hey…

J: (continuing, as if uninterrupted) The bigger things might notice, but the smaller ones will stay away. You’re too much for the little critters to handle. They just run.

C: That’s true.

J: The little things try to creep up on us all the time when we’re camped, I’m guessing y’all don’t really have that problem?

C: Yeah, generally. I mean it’s partly that we’re big and loud and, uh, partly that we have, um - we have some wards around the buildings to keep them away.

J: Oh, right! Your ground moves with you!

C: Yeah. So the, um - the wards and runes and stuff - I don’t remember what else, I don’t know much about protection...

J: We’ve got a few painted on the horses, but that’s as good as it gets for us. Oh, and woven into some of the saddle pads.

C: The what?

J: You know, the cloth that goes underneath the saddle? We got um… we got symbols woven into them sometimes, to just, you know, help out.

C: What symbols?

J: I don’t really know myself! I know they’re good luck, though. Some kind of old, like… old lines-in-circles -

C: (quietly) I think most glyphs are lines in circles.

J: - and it’s got like pictures of, you know, rivers and ice and whatever to push and block, and crosses and stuff. To keep the beasts at bay.

C: Oh. Huh. Does it work?

J: I can’t say, I don’t know.

C: Maybe here at the Outpost we should -

(static fuzz, longer this time)

C: - here, it might help us more.

J: I dunno, I think y’all got a good amount of protections. You just need more scouts.

C: (sighs) Well, that’s what the bird is for, I hope?

J: What’re you naming that bird, anyway?

C: Huh?

J: The bird. You gonna give her a name?

C: Oh, um… I - I could. I hadn’t thought about it.

J: Really! We always name the horses. Hurts more when they die, but what have you got, if you don’t have a name? Not a whole lot really.

C: ...I guess. I’ll think about it. Do you have a lot of, um… problems, with your horses?

J: Oh, yeah. All the time. We try to take care of them as best we can, but you know, the rash illness ain’t the only thing we have to worry about! Still gotta worry about every other health problem a horse can have. They get road founder -

C: (quietly) What?

J: - and ringbone, splints, bone spavin -

C: (quietly) This sounds like another language.

J: - some  _ mad _ back soreness, tick bites, cracked hooves, bowed tendons, you know. That’s just a tiny li’l list of a few potential problems.

C: I don’t… know what  _ any _ of that is.

J: (laughing) That’s fair! You don’t have to worry about any of it. But Lord knows we do. And that ain’t even  _ addressing _ all the crud that  _ we _ deal with, as riders!

C: It seems… uh, it sounds like living as a wild rider causes you a lot of trouble. Is - is that the case?

J: (sighs) Being a rider… It’s nice, yeah? It’s free. Feels good. But it’s real dangerous. And it’s constant work. Not to say that your life is easy by comparison! Your mechanics are on another level, let me tell you that. I’ve seen moving towns before but I never get used to ‘em. They’re wild. One thing, though - how do you stand how loud it is?

C: What? I mean, it’s loud while we’re moving.

J: No, it’s loud all the time. Even when you aren’t moving, you’ve got engines running somewhere. We got our horses, but at night, we can get absolute silence. I can’t imagine never having a moment to myself.

C: Huh. I never really thought about it, but you’re right. I only hear silence when I’m out of the Outpost, and that, uh… that doesn’t happen very often.

J: You immune?

C: I dunno.

J: (shocked) You don’t  _ know?? _

C: I - no, I don’t… we just never checked. My dad was. Maybe I am.

J: Was -

C: No.

J: ...that’s rough, kiddo.

C: (loudly) We’ve never ma - uh, managed to meet up with a town that has facilities for testing, and we’ve never caught a beast for it, so I just don’t know. It’s not so bad. I - I just wear a mask anyway if I have to, to go out to work in whatever biome we’re in.

J: Gotta get you tested. Then maybe you can come riding with us!

C: Oh, uh - uhhhhh….

J: (laughing) Not feeling up to riding?

C: I, uh, I’ve never actually… ridden a horse? I think I might die.

J: (laughing, louder now) Oh, listen to this! We can teach you. No charge.

C: I - but -

J: It’ll be good for you! C’mon. It’s too dark now, but tomorrow, you’re gettin’ started on Penelope. She’s our nicest horse. For kids.

C: (faintly) O-okay.

J: It’ll be great!

C: Okay. Okay. Um - yeah, for, yeah, sure. Oh boy.

J: (laughter) Can’t wait for this!

C: Let me check the -

(scraping and shuffling noises)

C: Oh, yeah, we’re running really low on power. Um, let me just -

J: (amused) Sure, sure. Go on.

C: Alright. Well, thanks for listening, and I hope you learned something from that. The next broadcast should be - should be a lot more, uh, normal. We’ll see. We’ll hope. I’m Charlie McAvoy, that’s - that’s Joey leBlanc, and I hope that you know, out there, that you are not alone. Good luck.

J: Aw, that sounded nice! Really professional.

C: (embarrassed) I hadn’t turned it off yet…

J: (laughter)


	7. Broadcast Six - Recorded September 20, 2097

Well, It’s been a few days. The wild riders took their leave. They didn’t need to stay too long; they took the opportunity to not ride for the most part, rest their animals. But that also meant that we didn’t really, uh, progress a whole lot. And while it was nice to have them scouting for us while we were on the move, it was also tough to keep a watch on the horses during the night. And we couldn’t travel constantly because the horses had to rest sometimes. But now, we’re back on track. Heading north.

Today is September 20th. I’m Charlie McAvoy, recording somewhere in the Midwest on my way to St. Louis.

So yeah, the wild riders are gone. Before they left, though, um, the - they helped us out one more time. We have a few scouts - no, not scouts. We only have one scout and she’s, um, she’s busy most of the time. We have a few… hunters, I guess? Who try to find food. I mean they try to hunt and kill food. Animals to eat. Uh, the wild riders helped us - helped them, the hunters - chase down a deer before they left.

You can’t really use machines for hunting. I mean, not like - not like horses. You can’t use rideable machines for hunting because they’re far too loud. The horses can be surprisingly quiet, though not as quiet as a single hunter in the trees - but then, a single hunter isn’t very fast, and also has to like sit in one place for hours and hours, and since we’re a moving town we don’t… really stay in one place long enough for that unless we’re settled for some reason.

The Outpost has to keep moving, because if it doesn’t, then the machinery starts to break down. Plus we follow the cold, trying to keep out of where it’s too cold to live but in where it’s too cold for beasts to be out and about. That, um, improves our chances of survival. A lot. It does make it hard to get food though because we can’t grow anything except in bins inside the town. So we can only grow small stuff.

Sometimes, we come across plots that have been tended to by other towns. We do what we can for those, and if the harvest is ripe, we take it, but on the whole we survive on, uh… well, it’s not very exciting. It’s - uh, let me see -

You know what, I’ve not really talked a whole lot about this but, um, the stuff we eat might not - might not be ordinary? So actually, um, for - for those of you in other countries… if, uh, if there  _ are _ people in other countries hearing this, I’m going to explain what we’re doing with our food, and maybe that’ll help you out? If you haven’t figured it out for yourself already. I mean, if you’re hearing this, you’re alive, so you’ve probably got it handled. But, uh, no sense in hoarding information to myself, I guess.

Okay. Fort Epiphany Outpost food talk time. Uh, so mostly we have a whole bunch of vegetables that we grow out of a bunch of big plastic tubs, and also, um, potatoes that we keep in barrels. A lot of potatoes. Are those a vegetable? Like, a root vegetable? Is that what those are…? I don’t remember.

We have barrels for them. Some of them are plastic and some of them are wood but there’s holes cut into the bottom because we grow them in, um… in layers, kind of, and by the time the top ones are planted you have to reach in and get the old potatoes or they’ll go bad. But you can put like fifteen potato plants in a barrel. There - there’s a lot of potatoes in this tiny town. We use them for, um… for everything.

Uh, we’ve got some corn, which is really useful. That we can make a bunch of stuff out of. Uh, we grow it in little boxes set into the ground and then it grows alongside people’s houses and gets shielded from the rain. We can, uh, rotate the town to have the sun on it as much as we want, so all the corn is always planted on the same side of the buildings, no matter where in the town they are.

Herbs are easy, we can put those in boxes and they’ll thrive. A lot of the varieties we have, uh, are ones that we could find and cultivate on our own. There are a couple we got a really long time ago from trades and just have kept propogating? Mostly the mint and garlic. We really treasure that garlic. It’s, um, really useful as a seasoning.

Oh, you know what I want to mention? Salt. Where do you get your salt? Do you have salt? Because it’s - it’s so important. We need that to live. But we can’t just - I mean, once we found a canister of salt in an old grocery store, but it wasn’t  _ good _ any more. It was crusted into one block.

We took it, obviously. But - that’s not, that’s not how we  _ get salt. _ We, um, we have to acquire it from the salt regions, up at the lakeside.

I know the - the Great Lakes aren’t saltwater. They’re freshwater. And they’re full of snakes. But um… there’s a also a couple of salt mines in the old cities up there, and, uh, that’s the best way to get salt, is from the mines, so… we go up there and get it.

Uh,  _ we _ don’t harvest it. We don’t know how. But the, uh, the inhabitants of the lake cities do.

There’s a couple settlements along the shores of the lakes, and then, uh, a bunch of settlements out on the islands. Those are typically safe from beasts and the like, especially with the waters swarming with snakes; nothing can swim to them. Um, if I, uh, remember correctly, there was - there was actually a breeding program to increase the snake population specifically as a deterrent against - against the rash illness. The snakes normally eat fish, but they showed a, um… a specific distaste for tiny beasts, too. I’m not sure... why? It’s not like they eat them. They’re too big to eat, unless they’re  _ really _ miniscule.

No, yeah, um, the islands are generally safe. But I’ve never been to them. I really want to, someday. I know before the end they were a whole bunch of, like… resort towns and stuff, and now they all got converted to real towns. I remember there was at least one - one research laboratory up there, it’d be nice to go and see that… 

Ah, I’d never live on the lakes. I can’t swim well enough. I’d die. Besides, they flood the land a lot, and that’s - that’s just a mess for everyone.

Um, but yes. There’s still salt mining - uh, not operations, really? Because you can’t go into the ruins of the Old World cities that are up there. They’re infested with trolls. But the salt mines are in the cities, and run down through the ruins, so they have to do, uh… expeditions, sort of? Explorations? No, expeditions is better. The people who live up north by the lakes do expeditions into the Old World cities and into the mines, they spend a few days in there mining, and then they get out and deliver what they got to the cities. I don’t - I don’t really know any more about it, because I’ve never… been that interested in it, but, um… I guess I could try to learn more if you’re curious?

I... have no idea how you would tell me that you’re interested. I don’t know why I thought that made sense.

Uh, yes. That’s - that’s where we get salt. Which we used to dry and preserve some of the venison from the deer, if we didn’t use it immediately. We don’t get meat very often, so we use it if we have to, and then preserve it if we can, and use it sparingly. It’s… precious, to us, I guess. It’s a rare treat.

What was I talking about at the start of this? Plants, I think? Yeah. Plants we grow in the Outpost.

Lettuces are really good in the cold and just keep growing. We have actually, uh, a couple different kinds of lettuce, which is nice. They grow at slightly different times, so we always have leaves to eat. Plus arugula and spinach. So those, corn, potatoes, and then anything we can forage in the woods which is kind of a lot if we have time, and then uh, anything that we can hunt down.

We occasionally stop to let the hunters go searching for food. We’ve got two hunters, mainly, and those are, um, those are Rick and Anguish, Rick Giddy and Anguish Arkenmoor. They go out when we’re stopped and try to hunt for us. Small game, little creatures, rabbits and squirrels and pheasants. Normally they don’t get a whole deer.

Now we have a whole deer. So we’re preserving a bunch of it. Um, I even claimed some of it, because I need food for Lady Louise; she can’t eat leaves. I give her all my meat bits.

Oh, I - that’s my bird! I named her! One of the wild riders told me to.

Um, kind of a - that was a strange situation. I think. It felt strange, anyway. One of the riders, um, I think their name was… Coyote? That sounds right. Coyote. They, uh, they dropped off a rooftop the night before the wild riders left and asked if they could walk with me. Which was, again, kind of strange. But they weren’t threatening me or anything so I said yes.

They brought up my bird and said I should name her. I asked them why, and they said it was just a good idea, because treating a vulture with care would put me in a favorable place. I still don’t know what that means. They, um, they didn’t - uh, didn’t elaborate. I asked but they just shook their head and didn’t give me an answer.

When they left, they asked me - it was the uh, the day after, and they were mounting up to go, and they asked me if I’d taken their advice. I said yes and told them her name - Lady Louise, because, I don’t know? She just seems like a Louise. And she’s very polite. I told Coyote her name, and they said something weird. They said the vulture would favor me. Which, I mean, I guess yes? She’s my bird. I told them that and they just kind of shook their head and said nothing.

So. Kind of strange. I guess they just liked my bird a lot and wanted her to like me. Which is totally fair, I don’t know how she feels about me  _ outside _ of the calm aura that I have for animals. Which, by the way, I’ve been lessening. I don’t - I don’t like using my power on animals if I can avoid it, because it feels… I don’t know, kind of gross? I mean, it’s fine if it’s just a one-time thing. But, like, I’m not going to do that every day always to keep an animal as my friend. That’s weird and bad. They should be free to go off and leave me if they want to. That’s why I’ve been using less of it on Lady Louise. But now she kind of seems like she wants to stay here, though that could just be my imagination speaking. I - I really don’t know.

Her wing is doing really well. Again, things, uh… they heal faster if I’m helping them. It’s still bound, though. It should take, um… six to eight weeks to heal if I weren’t helping them. So I say four to seven? Which means this  _ might _ be half done already, I don’t know. Depends on how bad the break was. But it really was super small. Lady Louise is just a big baby sometimes.

...yeah, I said it. What are you going to do about it? Huh? Hah. She’s on my shoulder. Don’t bite my ear too hard!

She’s really sweet, honestly. She was just scared at the start.

I wish she could help hunt. But she’s not a hunting hawk, like a redtail or anything, she’s a vulture. Which is actually better for us probably, because if we’re lucky, she can sniff out, um… she’ll be able to sniff out beasts and trolls for us. I know there’s a way to train birds for that, and I know vultures - well, her species of vulture - are, um, have a really really spectacular sense of smell. I don’t know how good that will be on ground level when she’s made for soaring? But I think it’s probably better than nothing for sure.

Joey was right. Hopefully she’ll help a bit and our poor scout will be able to rest finally. Um, that’s Hanna. Yeah, the pronunciation there is important. I don’t know why, I guess it’s a family name? It’s important to her. Hanna Laine. Yeah, the pronunciation matters on the last name too. It’s pretty, whatever it is.

Lady Louise should be able to - hopefully - scent beasts on the wind and show me which direction they’re in. Vultures are really good at making their way to prey; she’ll be just as able to find the beasts and trolls.

We can have her overhead and Hanna out and about, and we’ll be much safer, provided I can get her flying again.

Oh no. I - dang it. I wasted all my recorder time talking about vegetables and salt. I - alright. Well, there’s always next time.

Almost always.

Anyway, that’s all the power I have this week; I need to end this before the recorder shuts itself off and deletes my file. Which I’m not sure but I think it will do. So time to go.

Thanks for listening. As always, I’m Charlie McAvoy, and I hope that you know, out there, that you are not alone. Good luck.


	8. Broadcast Six-point-five - Recorded September 24, 2097

To whoever finds this, I need you to please, please take this to KMOX in St. Louis and broadcast it. 

I’m Charlie McAvoy, and I might die. Please, I want you to at least take these recordings to the station and broadcast them. I think I want to tell people around the world about what’s happened here, and see if we can contact them. The world isn’t gone, it’s just lost for a little bit. It’s just silent. We can bring it back together.

Right now I am hiding in a closet in one of the buildings in the town because we - we’re being  _ raided _ . By a group of people on four-wheelers. They’re, they’re much - uh, faster than we are, and by we I mean the town, so they, they surrounded us, and they have weapons that are, um, way more - 

...

Just heard them go by outside. Hold on.

...okay. Sorry. I think they moved on. I have to be quiet, I don’t - I don’t want to be found. Usually - no, I’ll explain later.

If you’re the raider finding this, I hate you. Anyone else, sorry.

They have at least one working automatic rifle. I don’t know where they got that.

If we survive this I’ll try to explain some stuff about raiders but right now I just have to ask you please, take this to KMOX. This should be the top file when you open the recorder because of how it saves them. I’m going to shut the recorder off and throw it down into one of the engine and motor ventilation tubes that runs through the buildings so the raiders don’t find it and hopefully someone else does. I hope I get to speak to you again.

Wait, was that - was that  _ gunfire - _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha


	9. Broadcast Seven - Recorded October 1, 2097

Okay. It took a full week to fish the recorder out of the ventilation tubing. But we’re fine, I got it, everything is good. Everything is fine. We didn’t lose a whole lot to the raiders, mostly they wanted supplies and we did manage to hide a little bit of our stuff. And - and they didn’t hurt anybody. We’re all fine, Lady Louise is fine, nobody got shot.

They took what they could find of the deer though. Kind of a bummer.

Um, right. Today is October 1st, and I’m Charlie McAvoy, and we’re in… uh, somewhere in Illinois. Headed towards St. Louis still, at the very least.

Raiders are… something. They’re not - they’re not  _ common _ , exactly, but they happen. I mean, of course they do. Not everybody is nice, and that’s just the way it is. Yeah. Usually if you just give them what they want they go away, and they don’t hurt anybody. We really think, um, the weapons probably aren’t necessary, but they have them anyway and threaten us with them. Which is, uh, really - really just over the top.

People will ride around in groups on vehicles, usually a couple mechanics in a group and then some folks who are decent at fighting, and raid moving towns. I have no idea how they survive outside of that. I really don’t. It seems so unsafe - but hey, I don’t know, maybe they’re criminals who escaped a city jail or something. I don’t know!

But I get - I get it. I mean, we’re in a pretty dangerous area. There’s a couple areas and then, um…. I mentioned scorch zones a while back, I think, right? We’re not in one of those, but we’re close to, uh… we’re close to something else that’s really dangerous, and that’s a bomb band.

I don’t know if other countries did this. Maybe you did? Maybe not? I don’t know. But a bomb band is, uh, it’s a place where they deployed a lot of targeted radiation to stop the spread of the illness. I mean, it didn’t do anything. Obviously. The, uh, the illness still got through. And now the land is super irradiated. It wasn’t with bombs, so I don’t know why we call it a bomb band, the bombs weren’t strong enough.

Ugh. I can’t imagine… what it must have been like, um, at the end. I - I mean, from the looks of it, this place - it bombed its own cities, because of the illness. I mean, who  _ does _ that? I hope that there, that the cities were empty, but, um, from what we’ve gathered… they weren’t.

I don’t know what means for the bands, then? I mean, I’m assuming people couldn’t travel through them. I said targeted radiation, but they’re roughly a mile wide, and there’s uh… a lot of them. It’s the ground that’s irradiated, so as long as you wash everything that comes in contact with the earth you’re fine, but, uh, that still makes it not safe to be in. Our town can move through them safely because of the metal and we just have to, uh, wash the treads off afterwards. Which is not easy, because we have to go somewhere with water and haul it up to the treads, but it’s better than not being able to move through them at all.

They’re not so bad. Um, they were mostly used as countermeasures, which is super unfortunate for the people who got stuck inside them - usually they were around cities or landforms or, like, towns, places people wanted to keep trolls out of. But it’s great for us, because it means we can get through and past most of them without trouble.

For folks like the wild riders and the raiders, it’s not that easy. See - with radiation, um, it’s not… it’s not like stepping into the area will kill you. It probably won’t, it’s been 90 years and barely anything’s left. Just enough to cause some minor, uh, some sickness if you’re not careful. But for that you’d still have to ingest, or inhale the, the dirt or dust or something. The water can be a little dangerous near the bands but it’s not that bad. Like I said, it’s mostly… mostly okay now. It’s been a really long time.

I think they, um, I think the bands just scare people on principle now. Which - which is fair, I mean, radiation is kind of… like, a bogeyman? I don’t know what that means, I just know it’s a term for a thing that is scary but nobody really knows anything about it. As long as you don’t touch the dirt and the trees and stuff you’re fine.

A lot of the radiation is in the animals too. You, uh, you can’t eat anything from the woods around the bands. Um, they might be living fine, but they’re more dangerous somehow. I don’t really know how to explain it? They just… it’s like it’s stronger inside the animals. It’s - it’s an old concept called, um… bioaccumulation, I think? If I’m remembering it right. The animals, they, uh, they just end up eating a whole bunch of radioactive... stuff. And then they’re dangerous to consume because one radioactive leaf is fine, but uh, the radiation of a thousand leaves is not fine.

Most people - raiders and stuff - don’t actually, um, know that. We just know that it’s dangerous to eat things from around the bands, because they’ll make you sick more often. The only reason I know that is because I, uh, I’ve taken the time to seek out old, like… books? From schools before the end. With information in them.

I’m - I’m not a biologist that’s, um, graduated from anywhere. That’s - that’s just what I call myself, really. Because I’ve, um, read a lot. About biology. Specifically that, and researched it for years. I’ve been to the Last Library, I know - I know as much as I can know.

I don’t think I’ve talked about the Last Library yet, actually. Oh boy. Okay. Um, it’s kind of legendary, honestly. For one, it’s - it’s in the middle of a city. And, um, that city is Cincinnati.

I - I think I talked about Cincinnati once before? It’s the city where one of the, uh, one of the big amalgamations is. Hiding in the power plant. But it’s too big to move now, really. Well, we  _ think _ that, but the Library isn’t moving again, so, uh, we just hope it doesn’t scoot around.

When, um, when the end came, it… took a while to get all the way across the continent. Obviously. It’s a big continent, with a lot of people all spread out. The population centers went down pretty fast, but it still took… a little bit to get everywhere.

In Cincinnati, they heard about it before it got there, because the first cases were in, um - in New York, and on the East Coast. Because, you know, it spread through Europe first, and then from there across the ocean to here. I don’t know if any of Europe is left at all. I mean, it’s not very big, so it fell pretty quickly… I hope there’s someone alive out there. I really do.

There has to be, somewhere.

But, uh, the Library. The Library. One of the librarians at the time - oh, what was her name? I can’t remember her name. I know it, I just can’t remember it… I’ll remember it if I just keep thinking about it probably. Um, she realized that the library was in, uh, not the  _ best _ location for what might be happening, and she got as many people as possible and took some of the collection and headed for this old train station by a huge train yard near the river. It’s right in the middle of the downtown, but it’s far away from any hospitals, or anywhere people used to live, so it was… pretty safe, honestly.

She got into the train station, and she and some other librarians secured the area and got a whole bunch of other people to help them, and then they moved the entire book collection into the Library and built a wall out of train parts. And, like, they didn’t know how to do it, but, uh, they had the entire library with them. They went and got stuff from the other buildings where the books were being kept too. So they could learn how to do… anything.

They fortified the building, and it’s - it’s a big building, but they built a huge wall out of ripped-apart train cars, and the wall still stands. They know pretty much everything so there’s a lot of witches there, and they protect the place from trolls, and there’s also cats all through the building and a lot of the librarians have familiars - either cats or snakes, they like - they like those, since both of those will, um, target beasts if they get in somehow. Which they very, very rarely do -

Static again. I was hoping maybe the ventilation tunnels had miraculously improved this old thing but I guess not. Hey, come on, work… Don’t give out on me.

I think we’re good? Okay, yes. The Library. They had the old metro tunnel running into the place but they boarded it up. Dragged some of the train stuff in and piled it in a barricade in front of the entryway up. And they filled the entire place up with books and it’s still like that.

A, a lot of people know about the Last Library. Everybody in the country, I think. Well, a lot of people. I don’t - I don’t know about beyond it. The rest of the world is silent.

You have to get into the city to go there, obviously, and they have, um… pretty strict entry procedures, really harsh quarantine and testing to get in. But it’s all necessary. The Library is… really important. Precious. I’ve only been there twice, on our routes north for the summer, and… wow. It’s just… 

It’s really something.

You can bring them books if they don’t have them yet. I mean, you can bring them books no matter what books they are, but you can donate them if they’re in good condition and new to the Library. Now, um, granted, there aren’t a whole lot of books they don’t have, but they are always - always looking. They keep track with computers. Actual computers. They’re ancient, but they still work! They use them to keep track of what books they have, and also to, uh, read things. There are books that are only in the computers. A lot of them. Millions of them. They almost got lost when the world ended. I think some of the librarians are trying to write them down? But that’s - that’s never going to end, there’s so  _ many. _

The entire Library is warded more than anywhere I’ve seen in my life. They, uh, they take their security  _ really _ seriously. Which I totally get. We don’t know if there are any other libraries left in the world. I mean, there probably are. But we don’t know for sure. Whatever the truth is, the Library has a giant wall built out of metal and stone, and painted with wards from like sixteen different gods minimum. Some people said they heard the call of the big giant over in the power plant, so they um, as far as I know, they put a whole bunch of metal plating up on the side of the Library that faces it and apparently that blocked it out? That and more wards.

There are more wards than I’ve seen anywhere else. I guess it comes from having so much knowledge; they have all the books you could imagine, and the books contain knowledge on how to do things like make wards.

The only problem with the Library is.. Getting to it. To get to it - to get north at all - we have to cross the river there. Um… the Ohio River, I think? Yeah, that sounds right. We actually crossed that… not too long ago, we had to get from Kentucky into Illinois and it covers like the entire border. It’s a real river, a big one, and the only way across is, uh, there are five bridges and a railway bridge, and they, um… they’re like, 140 years old. It is  _ not _ safe. We check them for days ahead of time to make sure they aren’t going to collapse and throw the entire town into the river. We can’t… float. We aren’t a boat.

Being a boat would actually probably be a better idea. I wonder if the mechanics have thought about that? Temporarily, uh, waterproofing the underside so we could float across? That’s - I know boats work even when they’re really heavy because of, um, something about… surface area?

I don’t know what I’m talking about.

We hate crossing the river. But that’s the only way into the main city of Cincinnati, and pretty much the only way across the river.

The librarians have, um… they try to help keep the way open. Most of them stay in the Library itself, obviously, but, uh… they have people who help. Like, a force, I guess? People work for them and keep the way open, clearing it of trolls, and they also try to help keep the bridges working. They’re strong bridges. And strong people.

The librarians  _ want _ people to come to the Library. They have one of the largest collections of knowledge in the world - I think - and they don’t want it getting forgotten. That’s how we know so much about what the world used to be like; from old books.

I mean, I didn’t read any of those when I was there. I read about animals. But, uh, I know that there are a lot of history books and stuff.

The point is, they try to keep the way open, even though it’s through a huge city. And I guess they have problems sometimes with trolls? But a lot of the trolls stay where they are. Cincinnati was, um… it was one of the cities that got evacuated, so less people died there than in, say, New York City or Los Angeles.

I know that because they have the transcripts of old reports at the Library, and Marsha read them and tells me stuff about them sometimes. I don’t even know where Los Angeles is. I don’t think I’m pronouncing that correctly either.

So the city was mostly abandoned except for dead and dying people by the time the rash illness hit it full force. Less trolls there than there otherwise might be, and that’s the case for a lot of these, um Midwestern cities, but there’s also a lot of rural -

…

Wow, that was a _big_ spike of static. That lasted for a while. I really wonder what’s causing that. Maybe radiation or something? No, that doesn’t make any sense. Um, I don’t know. Sorry about that.

Oh, but that does remind me that, uh, my time’s running out. This thing’s running low on power. It can’t stay charged at all. Probably because it’s a hundred years old. It’s magic how it manages to function.

Uh, I mean literally magic, the mechanics make it work. It wouldn’t otherwise.

Okay, I really gotta cut this off or it’ll delete my file. Thanks for listening. As always, I’m Charlie McAvoy, and I hope that you know, out there, that you are not alone. Good luck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a fun note, if you aren't interested in reading a story with an ordinary array of different types of people in it i.e. a spread with the nonbinary folks I have in here (Charlie, Alexandre, and Coyote so far), you can uhhhhhhh go ahead and leave. I'm not changing that. I refuse to erase the vast amount of people who exist in this world and don't obey the binary rules of modern heteronormative society, and I will not change my characters to make a bigot more comfortable. 
> 
> Thanks, and everyone else, who don't need to worry about this, enjoy!


	10. Broadcast Eight - Recorded November 14 2097

Hi there, everyone. It’s been a little while since I recorded. There’s a really good reason for that, I promise you. I was, uh… recovering, from an injury. Just like Lady Louise.

Lady Louise can fly now! She can fly. I’m so proud of her. Oakley helped take care of her while I was, um, indisposed, but she didn’t like him very much. She likes me best. She can fly now, and does circles over the town while we move. She’s already found us a beast once.

I, I wish she’d been able to fly sooner.

Today is November 14th, and we’re halfway across Illinois. It’s been a long time since I recorded, and that’s because I was confined to the doctor’s house, recovering, because Alexandre cut my arm off.

If I sound mad, it’s because I _ am _ mad.

Here’s the story. We were attacked by beasts while I was outside with them watching. They have a sword thing. We got attacked, it latched onto my hand, and instead of killing it, Alexandre just cut my arm off at elbow and THEN killed it.

Thanks for that, Alexandre. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much for this. For that.

And, like, we’re pretty sure I’m immune! There was no reason for that! They _ didn’t have to do that! _ But apparently, they thought they needed to.

Needless to say, I’m, um, I’m not happy with this situation!

It’s fine. It’ll be fine. The mechanics said they can make me a prosthetic, one that actually responds to me and obeys me and that I can use with my abilities. But I’m - this didn’t need to happen, they could have just _ killed the damn beast _ -

I’m going to take a deep breath here because there’s no reason to get so heated over it. It’s done. There’s no changing it now.

I’m still mad.

_ Aside _ from that, I’m not certain what else has been going on. I was - I was stuck in the doctor’s, I mentioned. Um, the recovery, uh, didn’t - didn’t go so well. I… got pretty sick. Not - not with the rash illness. Because I’m _ probably immune to it _ and so it doesn’t MATTER, but other illnesses. I got - the wound got infected. Badly. Um, really badly. So I was - I was down for a while. 

That was… I feel like I want to mention this, but I don’t know if I - actually, I can. It’s _ my _ radio broadcast. And who knows maybe this’ll be… if not useful, at least interesting to you.

I, um, I was out for a while. Unconscious. But I dreamed.

It was… really strange. I don’t remember a lot of it, and you know, apparently you’re supposed to have strange dreams when you’re sick. I - I wouldn’t know, I’ve only gotten seriously sick a few times, and it’s never been too terrible. So, uh… I thought maybe I would. But I only had one dream that I remember.

I was on some kind of… grassy plain. You know how normally you don’t really have coherent locations in dreams? I had a coherent location. It was a plain, or a field, or some expanse of grass, and the town was behind me, resting. It wasn’t moving. It was… maybe evening? I think it was evening. Late evening, really night; just a little bit of light left.

It was me… and _ Coyote. _ The, um, the wild rider. I wasn’t expecting that either, uh, when I woke up. But in the dream they were um… they were sitting next to me in the grass, looking at the stars as they began to appear.

I remember they looked at me, and they said, “now, how did that happen?” and I told them that it was Alexandre’s fa - Alexandre’s doing, I told them what they did, and Coyote looked at me again and they, um… they nodded and said “You’re hurt.” And I said yes, I was. And they looked - they pointed at me and I looked down and saw my arm gone like it is in real life, and it was sort of… frozen in time, and I just mean it wasn’t like. Bleeding and everything. And Coyote said, “She’s got your back.”

That, uh… that really confused me. I still don’t know what that means. I asked them, but they just shook their head and said that’d I’d find out. 

I asked them what was going on. They said I would probably wake up soon, and that if I did, I’d have Her to thank. They said that She wouldn’t hold it against me if I didn’t choose to listen after then.

That’s Her with a capital H, and She with a capital S, and, uh, I don’t - I don’t know what those mean. _ I don’t know what those mean. _ I don’t! I have no idea. I - I still don’t understand, but it’s just been rattling around in my head and I _ still _ haven’t managed to draw any conclusions and I don’t know who ‘She’ is and I don’t know how I’d be able to find out and I -

\- oh, h - oh hey, Lady Louise… Sorry. I shouldn’t get worked up about things. You’re right, I’m sorry.

She gets a little panicky if I get loud at all. I try not to do it, so that I don’t worry her. Usually it’s not a problem because I’m, um, I’m not - I’m not a loud person. But, uh, I’ve been a little… on edge, lately.

My arm hurts.

I don’t know if you’ve ever lost a limb. Um, it hurts. But not because the wound hurts. My wound is - it’s all healed up now. As, as near as I can tell it was a, uh, a pretty clean… detachment. 

That’s so gross. Moving on.

It doesn’t hurt because of the wound it hurts because… it’s not there, and I keep feeling like it is? I don’t know. It’s weird. Also, everybody keeps giving my sympathetic looks, and I hate it. I hate it. Leave me alone, Alexandre did this. I can’t do anything, I have _ one hand _ and now I just have one bird and one hand and a tape recorder.

I’m… looking forward to that prosthetic. 

God. This broadcast sure is a, uh, downer, huh? Let’s try and talk about, um, something else.

It’s November. Mid-November now. I… wasn’t awake or present enough to record it, but the, uh… the temperature has dropped pretty steadily and over the past weeks. It’s now cold and windy instead of just windy. And the area we’re in is pretty flat, so the wind is, uh, it never stops. It’s really intense. It just sweeps across the prairielands in these giant gusts. It’s beautiful, in a way; it’s like… It’s kind of what I think the ocean would look like. I’ve never - I’ve never seen the ocean, but I would assume it looks similar to the lake. The, uh, the lake that borders, um, Canada. Lake Erie. I think I mentioned it before. It’s full of snakes?

I think the wind would look on the ocean like it does there, only vaster. But the wind on them both - on all three, if you count this sea of grass - is the same. It’s always the same. It goes, for miles and miles, and speaks…

...what was I talking about?

Uhhh, I don’t remember. Something about the prairie.

In the autumn, the wind gets stronger even than it normally is, and the trees - if there are any - lose all their leaves. Obviously. Well, maybe not obviously. If - if you live in one of those places that’s always warm, you don’t know what that looks like, probably.

...if you live in one of those areas, how are you alive, actually? How do you survive in an area with no winter? I know it can get very warm down south, and there are some places in the world with no seasons, places that are always warm. Just like the places that are always cold. But in the places that are always warm, the trolls would… always be active. You wouldn’t have any safe times to move about. How do you do it? Don’t they come for you? 

...you probably can’t answer me. But, uh, if you figure out how to send a message our way, we’ll… we’ll be listening.

I don’t know what else to say. I’m just… waiting, now. Waiting for the - waiting to get to St. Louis, waiting for my wound to heal, waiting for Lady Louise to get better, waiting for the mechanics to make my arm, waiting for the -

...what was I going to say there? I don’t know what I was going to say. I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t understand.

I don’t know what Coyote was saying. I don’t know what to do about this - I -

I feel like something has to happen. I feel like something is _ going _ to happen. But I don’t know what.

...have you ever felt like that? Have you - have you ever experienced that? Do you know what it means? Has anyone ever known what it means? Please tell me if you know. If you can. Whatever.

Maybe by the time we can broadcast this, I’ll already be aware.

I get the feeling that I… I will.

I don’t have anything else. I’ll just save the power on this and record sooner than I normally do.

What do I usually say at the end of these? Uhh… I’m Charlie McAvoy and I’m…

...I don’t remember.

…


	11. Broadcast Nine - Recorded November 17, 2097

It’s been a few days, and I’m really glad I waited and didn’t just delete the other recording and try again, ‘cause I got my prosthetic fitted yesterday and it, uh… it works. It works  _ great. _ The mechanics, um… know what they’re doing.

I mean, it doesn’t - it doesn’t hurt that they’ve known me for, like, my entire life. So they know how I… operate, I guess? That only helps things.

I still can’t feel my arm. Obviously. Because it’s not there. But I can… control this new one, pretty well. It’s based on…

… I have no idea. I don’t know how it works. I just know that the doctor knocked me out with something and then woke me up when they had bolted this thing to my bone. It’s super heavy and I keep walking all weird, but I sort of know where it is, you know, like you would with a normal hand? I sort of know, and I can move it. It’s not perfect. But it’s - it works.

Alexandre won’t look at me. I think they know I’m still mad. Because I am. I really could’ve used that arm.

Whatever. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.

Today is November 17th, and we’re still - we’re still in Illinois, but we’re getting close to the border of Indiana.

It is currently snowing. Not a whole lot, but some. Enough to cover the ground a bit and  _ hopefully _ enough to drive away any stray trolls or beasts. Um, we don’t - we don’t need any more problems with that.

That’s… something we’re worried about. With the radio station. We don’t know if it’s full of beasts.

St. Louis, as far as - as far as we know, um, is - ... I just realized I named my bird Lady Louise and we’re going to St. Louis. I just realized that. That - that wasn’t on purpose. I didn’t know that happened. That’s weird. I didn’t even consider that. Does that mean something? Probably not. No, probably not.

St. Louis, as far as we know, is - uh, was one of the cities that got evacuated. So hopefully there aren’t, um… a whole lot of trolls in it. I mean there probably are. They seek out sheltered places. And ideally the station is sheltered.

If it’s not, uh… that’s gonna be a problem.

I think what we’re going to do when we reach the river is, um… leave the town on one side of it and send a small group across until we know that it’s safe. Because - I mean, chances are, the stuff doesn’t even work! But that’s why we have mechanics.

If it weren’t for the mechanics we wouldn’t even attempt this. I mean - it’s a radio station. We can’t fix a radio station without next to divine intervention, and the mechanics are, um, almost that. Almost. So I think that’ll be good enough.

I mean, of course, it depends on how broken it is. But if worst comes to worst we can, um… we can try to cannibalize the bits in there and then mix them with, um… with our own radio board here. We don’t - it’s not fantastic, but it should help. 

Uh, that’s kind of a last resort though. I’d - we’d prefer not to destroy the Outpost’s only method of communicating with the larger world. That would - that would not be good.

Tch-tch, come here -

_ Oof. _ Lady Louise is, um, heavy, and she keeps landing on my new arm, and that’s - I’m not used to that yet. It’s kind of… heavy? On my bone. Ow. But I - I need to get used to it. The mechanics - uh, mostly Gal, really - and Doctor Geoff - uh, yeah, it’s supposed to be pronounced like that, I think, with the hard G and the really like… stringent “ee” noise… Um, Gal and Doctor Geoff told me not to stress it too much right off the bat, but to um… apply minor strain to the joining so that the, uh, so that the bone would grow stronger. More able to support the metal. And, um, so that the like… muscle of the arm, sort of, would get stronger? This is really weird, to talk about my own arm, I just wanna note that. That’s really strange. It’s kind of uncomfortable.

The point here is that having Lady Louise land on my arm repeatedly is helping somehow. It… looks really weird. It looks  _ really _ weird. Not Lady Louise, I mean the arm. It’s…

Hey - and go, over there - yeah, good! Good.

Okay, so, I don’t know if you can do this sort of stuff. Wherever you are. Do you have mechanics? I don’t know if you do. If you don’t this is going to sound, like… really strange to you.

I’ve got this, um… okay, so what they did is they removed the, uh… Okay, when Alexandre - when they went to  _ town _ on my  _ arm _ they simultaneously, um, dislocated my elbow and then cut it apart. So I still had, like, half of the joint left. But they um… Gal and Doctor Geoff cut that off too and replaced it with this, like… metal rod that goes into the bone, and a metal sort of coating, almost? That runs up my arm. So it’s less like just the front bit and almost my entire arm that’s got all this weird metal now. Metal fabric. There’s fabric? I don’t - I don’t understand it. But I do know that I, um, I can feel where my hand is, where my arm is, and I can move it really easily. With just… like you would move a flesh and bone arm.

Tch-tch, here! Here, pretty Lady.

Uhhh, Gal - no, not Gal. Um, Leo. Leo has two fingers like this, where they got cut off doing something and now he uh… he has metal ones. Metal and plastic. They’re like… mannequin fingers, almost. I think they were once?

I have no idea what this arm is made of. It looks like, umm… like just pieces of scrap metal and plastic. I can’t tell if any of it is anything special from anywhere. It’s just bits and pieces. I think they picked some of them up from buildings we moved through while I was, uh… out.

They were worried about it becoming infected but that doesn’t really seem to be a concern now, it hasn’t gotten bad at all. It does hurt, but just because there’s not the normal arm there anymore. That’s it.

I think they were really pleased about that. Something about it, um… Something about it keeps just, like, popping up in my thoughts. But I can’t figure out what.

Go, Lady! Yes, good. Good girl.

Sorry, I keep - I keep sending Lady back and forth from a perch that’s built for her in this room. Uh, I didn’t do it, obviously. I don’t actually know who did? I just woke up and it was there and she was sitting on it. That was really nice of somebody to do. Lady Louise seems to have, um, almost a bond with me! Which is nice. I think that’s more than most birds have with people. I checked to make sure I wasn’t overusing my magic, and I’m not, so I really don’t know what’s - why she’s so calm and friendly around me. I don’t know! But I don’t mind.

Oh, geez, another thing about this arm. It’s not waterproof. So I can’t get it wet. Or, like, I should avoid getting it wet. I mean - okay, it’s not like it’ll just die if I get rain on it, and they - they did try to protect it. But, uh, it’s not perfect, so it’s more like… it’s just best not to try anything? It’s just best not to push the limits. Like, why cause problems if I don’t have to?

Lady, here! Tch-  _ oof, _ you’re heavy! Or maybe that’s just the arm. You’ve got some heft to you, big girl! Big beautiful girl. Pretty Lady.

The, uh, the waterproofing thing does suck a little bit because, um, usually I mess around in rivers. So, uh… I guess we’ll cross that bridge when I get to it? I’ll cross that bridge. Not we.

It might be time for my beautiful girl to do some searching duty, actually. I think Hanna’s out right now? But Lady’s supposed to go looking soon. Her wing’s fully healed, but she likes to pretend it isn’t, so that she can sit around inside instead of doing work like the rest of us. Hey, don’t look at me like that! You gotta earn your keep around here!

That’s not necessarily true. We’d take care of you all the same. You’re my precious bird, after all! Lovely Lady Louise. We don’t leave people or animals behind if you’re hurt. I don’t care what anybody else says; if we, if you’d been unable to fly, I would’ve kept you forever and taken care of you.

That’s - that’s what we do. People. Good people, I mean. We take care of each other, even - even if it doesn’t, if it isn’t what would be the best for us. That’s why the entire town made diversions and stops to find stuff for me, to find stuff to, uh, to make me a new arm. Because… we care about each other. We’re not going to leave people behind or let people get hurt.

We’re better than that.

Back to your perch, Lady. Good  _ girl! _

So it’s snowing. That’s a good thing. I mentioned already it’ll drive all the trolls out of the open, and, um, we have to be in the open areas, so… away from the trolls. That’ll also discourage them from following us if they do catch our scent. Or our sight. Catch our sight? No, that’s the wrong way around. Catch sight of us. Yeah, that’s the right one.

They won’t want to come out in the open, is the point. They won’t want to leave their cozy little nests to follow us.

Which is the ideal. Considering what we’ve been through lately, we super do not need, um, any more troll activity near us. At all. We’ll have enough of that to worry about in St. Louis.

We’re on our way. I’m - I’m feeling nervous about this, because what if the radio station turns out to be a total bust, but… I’m also feeling pretty good about it? I don’t know why. Guess I’m just hopeful.

Maybe it’s Lady Louise’s good influence. Here! Tch!

She’s really picked up quick on those commands. Uh, I would whistle, like - like real falconers do, but I actually can’t? I don’t know why. I’ve tried, I just can’t do it. So I have to use other noises. It’s probably really hard to hear but Lady Louise always knows where I am anyways. She’s so good.

Right, it’s time for her to go scouting. She  _ can _ scout in the snow, her eyesight is pretty good, and the cold hasn’t really affected her sense of smell that much. She can really just zero in on any abnormalities out there. 

Ah! We have to go! I keep getting distracted. I have to be out there with her when she’s scouting - uh, not out in the, outside the town! Just out in the open. I have to be visible so she’ll know where to come back to. So I’d better cut this short. But I’ll try to - I’ll try to do regular recordings again.

Thanks for listening. As always, I’m Charlie McAvoy, and I hope that you know, out there, that you are not alone. Good luck.


	12. Broadcast Ten - Recorded November 21, 2097

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi sorry it was finals and I about died but I'm back to updating now, so sorry for the delay
> 
> Thanks for your patience, love y'all

A while back in these broadcasts I talked about the different types of, uh, towns that existed. Moving towns. Like mine, with treads, or other ones, with legs. I don’t remember if I mentioned other types? I know there are ones on water. And I know there are ones that are in the air.

Guess what we found today?

Today is November 21st, and it’s still snowy. It’s just been doing little flurries for days. I think it’s really pretty; it’s, it’s really beautiful, though it makes moving around a little bit harder. Not that much harder. But a little bit. At least we don’t have to worry about, like, air turbulence.

That’s something some people  _ do _ have to worry about. Like the people who live in Waygate. We met them today.

We thought, when we first saw it over on the uh… northwestern horizon, we thought it was a storm cloud, maybe, but Aysa took one look at it and told us it wasn’t natural. When we got closer, we realized that yeah, there was something really up with the clouds, and then we picked up a signal on our radio asking us who we were.

It’s a city. Well, it’s as city as you’ll get with a moving town. It’s huge, and it’s held up by balloons and stuff. It’s really wild. There are a bunch of weather-witches who keep it disguised in clouds and stuff or keep it from getting hurt by lightning; Aysa looked real jealous when she figured out what the place was. Which is totally reasonable, I mean, if I found a conclave of animal mages or something who were all really powerful and skilled and used their cool abilities every day to survive and not just in the service of some tiny town with five families and some other random people wandering around in it…

...listen, I’m just saying, she has every right to want to leave and stay here instead.

She won’t, though. She already said as much. Uh, I asked. I got nervous. She likes the Outpost.

Um, Waygate is… I don’t know how many people live there. A few thousand, maybe? It’s freaking  _ massive. _ It’s a big… I don’t really know how to explain it. A floating city, kind of? I mean obviously it’s a floating city. It has these huge balloons around all the sides, a bunch of big ones and then a ton of smaller ones attached to the individual, um, platforms. They’re above it too, tied to all the different parts of the city.

Uh, it’s not made of metal like the Outpost is. It’s made of wood and like… wicker, I think, is what that’s called? It’s like woven reeds. Which doesn’t sound very sturdy to me, but I guess if they’re not getting attacked by trolls in the sky then it doesn’t need to be very sturdy. Oh, and it - Waygate isn’t like the Outpost in that it’s… okay. The Outpost is a single sheet of metal, sort of, that has treads underneath and we just roll along. We’re one distinct thing.

Waygate is… not that. It’s a whole bunch of boats in the sky. Like a, um, like a flock of birds. The boats are all tied together with rope and steel cables, and some of them make these, uh, these bridges between the boats. Some of them aren’t bridges, they’re just ties, but I’ve seen people moving around on them regardless. Which, uh, is terrifying. You’re like a mile off the ground. Well, probably not that much. I don’t know how far up we are. But it’s not… it’s not a  _ trivial _ distance, that’s for sure. And, like, there’s nets strung underneath the boats, and I get that that makes it safer, but like… there aren’t any over by the sides and that is terrifying.

The thing about Waygate in general that I find most interesting is, um… is that even though it’s a whole bunch of weird sky-boats, and not a town like the Outpost, it still… it feels like a town. Like a city. I’ve - I’ve been to cities before, the ones along the lakeshore, and they feel like this one even though there aren’t any streets or walkways or normal buildings.

The boats are layered on top of one another. They’re not all on one flat piece of - they’re not all arranged side by side. That’s one of the strangest things. There aren’t tall buildings, because there’s boats above them in the way, so everybody lives in these sort of long, narrow homes with… honestly, they’re less like roofs and more like, um, lids. Some of the boats are big enough to have a second area underneath the first one but not a lot of them. It’s so strange. And people will just build structures on the tops of the boats, but they don’t look like houses. They’re oddly shaped. Very… round? Very, uh, ovular. They’re all made of reeds and stuff, not of wood; wood is too heavy, apparently.

I’ve been wandering around this place for a while trying to get a good look at everything. It’s… in cities there are avenues and stuff, places you can walk down. Here it’s - it’s not like that at all. I’ve had, um, a little bit of trouble climbing through everything, because, uh, I’m not very good at climbing. I sure as anything can’t use the new arm for that. It’s - I’m not good enough with it yet.

I’ve seen kids climbing through the ropes and stuff. They’re  _ way _ better at it than me. I guess if you grow up here you’re naturally going to be super used to it.

I wonder if this is what being a bird is like. When you look down you can see the ground way way below, spread out like a blanket. All brown and white, though I bet it looks really nice in the summer-time. It’s so distant. From up here it kind of… it almost seems like the world is just a quiet picture floating along below. I can see how people up here would just lose track of the land underneath them, the time, everything. It’s all so distant.

The kids really like Lady Louise. I think that’s kind of funny; they have to have seen vultures and stuff before, right? All the time? But apparently they haven’t seen them up close, and that’s the cool bit. They keep asking to pet her. She doesn’t mind too much.

Nobody up here seems to have any pets. I guess that makes sense, but I’m so used to people having cats that it’s really weird to see a town without them. But I guess that this isn’t really a safe place for cats. They’re way more prone to, um… standing in dangerous places than people are, and they would almost for sure fall off the, uh, off the edge of the city. Through the city? Jeez, it’s really hard to tell when the city isn’t, uh, a single concrete thing.

They  _ do _ have chickens. That, I think, is really important. That means they have eggs. But I don’t… I don’t know how they  _ feed _ the chickens…?

Uh, I should take a look at that. How  _ do _ they feed them? It’s not like there’s grass or bugs up here. What…?

I really don’t know. That’s, um, really weird actually.

Also, side note, it’s  _ cold _ up here. Way colder than I expected. I guess because we’re up high? I didn’t realize it would make that much of a difference, but I’m really glad to, uh, to be inside right about now. The wind isn’t too bad but it cuts right through my clothes.

It’s really pretty. Aside from the balloons and the wicker there’s a ton of, like… nets and vines everywhere. The nets hang down from the sides of different baskets and just dangle down in the air, or on the sides of the houses and stuff. They grow so many plants on vines. It’s snowing, so they pulled a bunch of the nets with the vines up. They pull them up when it’s cold and wet so they don’t all freeze and die.

I didn’t even know were that many foods that grew on vines? I mean, they have, like… vine tomatoes. Vine… I don’t even know what some of these fruits are. There’s a bunch of stuff I don’t recognize. They have little brown ones that are green inside but they have, uh… hair?

I don’t know. It’s really weird.

Um, we could get up into it. They actually invited us up. The city has so many balloons and lightning rods and nets with vines on it I’m surprised there’s anything else up there. But there’s so many people! It was kind of overwhelming.

Oh - I don’t know if you can hear that. Can you hear that? I’m actually recording this  _ in Waygate _ and you can sort of… well, it’s a lot quieter in terms of, uh, movement, but you can hear the wind and you can hear  _ people talking. _ Outside. Because there’s so many of them.

That’s really strange to me.

So, yeah, they let down this, um… basket, sort of? That we could get into. I got to go up because there’s an actual like… clinic here and the Outpost wants to test me for immunity. I mean, I am immune, I think, so I really don’t see why we need to test, but sure. I’ll submit to it. Why not.

Big basket on ropes. I got in, and a couple others, and they pulled it up. All the way up. They did move the city a little closer to the ground to make it, uh, possible at all.

Lady Louise got to come with me, of course. They couldn’t let too many people up because, um, of the weight of the boats. If we have too much weight, whatever boat we’re in will sink and pull the rest of the city with it, but if it’s too light, the city will rise too much. So they can’t have a ton of visitors or it’ll upset the balance. But, uh, Lady Louise is a bird, so she really doesn’t add that much weight.

The, uh, the doctor here - Doctor Vale, I think, her name is? - was pretty interested by my arm and the, um… situation surrounding it. She wanted to take a look at it, but unfortunately it’s not removable, so there’s not… not a whole lot I can do about that. She seemed kind of disappointed.

Still, she had some of Waygate’s mechanics come look at it. She said they might try to fix it up a little bit, make it less, um, vulnerable to water.

Oh, water is  _ weird _ up here. They seem to have a bunch of it and I was wondering how, but it turns out they just collect clouds. You wouldn’t think that works but apparently it does. They have big tarps that they put up and the water just appears on them and rolls down and gets collected, it’s so weird.

Since the weather-witches can call clouds, uh… that’s pretty sustainable, honestly.

Up here right now… it’s me, and Aysa’s up here too, off chatting with the Waygate witches. I think she wants to learn from them? Which is definitely, um, super fair.

Very. If there were any other bird-keepers up here, I’d… hold on, wait. There  _ have _ to be other bird-keepers. We’re in the sky. What on - why would there not be -

There has to be a birdkeeper up here. Just because I haven’t seen them yet doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I have to find out who’s up here that keeps birds. That deals with birds somehow. There  _ has _ to be.

I’m going to go find the birdkeeper.

Uh, I’m pretty excited about that now actually. I’m gonna head out and do that now. Hey, thanks for listening! As always, I’m Charlie McAvoy, and I hope that you know, out there, that you are not alone. Good luck!


	13. Broadcast Ten-point-five - Recorded November 21, 2097

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got another one of these!

(sound of motion, as someone moving; perhaps walking, perhaps climbing, as noted by the creak of wicker and the rustle of footsteps)

(muffled exclamation)

(sound of vulture hissing)

CHARLIE (C): Whoa, whoa, easy! I just lost my balance there, that - that’s all. Easy, Lady.

(hissing subsides)

C: (quiet chuckle) Didn’t mean to upset you, ma’am.

(no audible sound)

C: And so you nibble my ear! Yeah, alright. Come on. Careful, I have to climb over the edge here -

(creaking of wicker)

C: Alright, we’re good. Um, excuse me? Uh - hello?

(sound of knocking on wicker)

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE (UV): One minute!

C: Oh. Yeah, sure, of course.

(pause, sound of door opening)

UV: Alright, what do you - oh, who the…?

C: Hi, sorry, um, I’m Charlie, I’m from the - from the Outpost, uh, the town down below right now.

UV: (critically) Uh huh. Okay, and…?

C: I was told you, um, have experience handling birds…? 

UV: Why do you want to know?

C: Uh, I have - Um…

(movement)

UV: Oh! Oh, I see. Okay. That beautiful sssspecimen was outta my sightline. Give me a second, let me grab… Get over here, so I can see easier!

(sharp whistle, sound of wings and something landing)

C: Oh! You’ve got a red-tail.

UV: Sure do. Not certain which one this is, but that’s just how it is. They come and go.

C: Wait, you have more than one?

UV: I got chairs out here for a reason. How about we sit down and have a chat, kid? 

C: Yeah, yeah, sure, yes.

(movement, creaking)

UV: Alright. First off, how about you introduce yourself? Properly.

C: Uh - um, I’m Charlie, Charlie McAvoy, from Fort Epiphany Outpost.

UV: That’ll do. You didn’t ask if I was the right person, so I’m guessin’ you don’t have my name. I’m Wolfgang Stevensson, but you can call me Wolf if you want.

C: O-oh. Sure.

W: Someone told you I keep birds, is that right?

C: Yes, I asked - um, I asked the, oh, I don’t know her name, but she has all the flower-boxes outside? With the… uhhh….

W: I know who you’re talkin’ about. That’s Penny. Yes, I know what that place looks like. My eyes don’t work, but that don’t mean I’m blind.

C: Um - how does… if I can ask, uh, how does that work?

W: I see through the birds, of course.

C: You… what?

W: (laughs) The birds. They’re my eyes. Much better than any normal human eyes, lemme tell you that.

C: But… how?

W: How do you have that bird on your shoulder, Charlie?

C: Um… you’re talking about Lady Louise. Well, uh - she just… I found her, and healed her because her wing was broken, and even though I stopped influencing her she’s stuck around.

W: That word you used, there, ‘influencing.’ What’s that mean?

C: I don’t - I mean, it’s just what I can do. I can calm animals, you know, if I touch them. And stuff.

W: Same sort of deal. Except I don’t calm them, I bond with ‘em. They stick around, sort of. They’re my eyes.

C: Um. All… all of them at once?

W: (laughs) Hell no! One at a time. (laughs) ‘All of them at once.’

C: And it’s not - you said they, um, come and go. You said you didn’t know which one that was.

W: (shifting, wicker creaks) That’s right. I use different birds. They need to go hunt, they can’t be sittin’ on my shoulder all day staring at whatever I want them to stare at. Naaah, nah, nah, they got better things to do. They cycle. They do whatever they want.

C: They just fly off?

W: Yeah. I’ve always got one with me, that’s good enough. If another shows up the one can go.

C: Does one always show up when you, when you need it?

W: Eh, I’ll call one.

C: Call?

W: Yeah. You feel when other people use power?

C: Uh… Uhhhhhhh -

W: (snorts) I’ll take that as a no. C’mere. I’ll _ make _ you feel it.

C: (movement) That makes me nervous, but okay.

W: Relax. If I hurt you, your bird would attack me, and she’s twice the size of this hawk. Who would just fly off anyway.

C: (nervous laughter) Okay!

W: Alright. Gimme your hand. Yeah, good. Alright, wait a second and sense.

C: What - what am I waiting for?

W: _ Geez, _ kid, have a scrap of patience! For - ah, just pay attention.

C: (nervously) Okay, sorry, yeah, I - oh! _ Oh! _ What did you just do?

W: (laughing)

C: What was that?!

W: (laughing)

C: It’s - that was like… that was like an electric shock, but… different, somehow?

W: (laughing) You should see the look on your face, kid! Hah!

C: What…

W: I put a li’l extra zing on it just for you. But that’s a call.

C: A call… for the birds?

W: That’s right. Give it a few minutes, another bird’ll show up. You do that, too, with your bird, yeah?

C: Uh, no.

W: Nah, I bet you do. You just don’t notice it.

C: I - no, I don’t think I do?

W: Really? You don’t ever call your bird back with your thoughts an’ what have you?

C: Nnnno, I have to be out in the open or she doesn’t know where I am, and I use, uh… you know, little noises to call her back. I can’t whistle though.

W: Let’s try that out. Send her off.

C: (alarmed) My - Lady Louise?

W: Yeah. Send her off. She’ll come back.

C: But what if she doesn’t know where to -

W: She’ll be fine, she’ll be fine. Go on, throw her off the edge.

C: I - no! I’ll - I’ll toss her gently into the air.

W: (snorts) Alright.

C: Lady, um, go on, fly about… no, really, go. Below Waygate. Below - you can’t understand me. Um - go, fly. Hup!

(sound of large wings flapping)

W: (critically) Well, you got there eventually.

C: (worried) What if she doesn’t know how to get back to me?

W: Relax, kid. We’ll make sure she comes back. We’re gonna wait ‘til she’s outta sight, and then we’ll have you call her.

C: But… will she be able to hear me?

W: Ideally, no.

C: (alarmed) But then how will she know to -

W: With your _ mind _, kid, do I gotta spell it out for you?

C: I can’t do that!

W: Yeah, right now, and you’re ‘boutta learn how.

C: Oh… really?

W: _ Yes _, kid. Geez. Now we - oh, hol’ up. Somethin’s coming.

(shifting, movement)

C: Where? What is it?

W: Quit freaking out. It’s just a bird.

(sound of wind)

W: Here he comes, to save the day.

(sound of wings, and some screeching; a minor squabble between two birds)

W: Hey! Get outta here, shoo! Your shift’s up. Go huntin’. You, get over here. That’s right. Get on, go!

(sound of wings, soft squawking)

W: You, cool it. You can’t wing in here an’ attack whoever’s on duty.

(no response from the bird)

W: (sighs) Sometimes, they cause trouble. Gotta break that up. Ain’t easy to do when you’re looking at yourself from another angle, I’ll tell you.

C: I… didn’t even think about that.

W: Yeah. No one ever does. So this is a different bird. Called him up, now he’ll sit with me while the other one goes off an’ does whatever it is she does. Maybe I’ll call her back. I dunno. Whoever I call next will just be whatever’s close.

C: You don’t train them or anything?

W: Nah, why would I? Don’t need to. Just need ‘em for a little while, so I don’t bother with teaching commands and all that.

C: Uh… huh.

W: I see the look on your face. You don’t like it.

C: Well - I mean - it’s, it’s not like… okay, it’s. That disrupts their natural feeding patterns, and are you just… commandeering them? Just taking them and controlling them?

W: Yeah, but not for long. They go back when they’re done, just fine. I never keep a bird for more than a day at a time.

C: But Waygate can travel so far in that time!

W: Eh, they go back to where they came from. They find their way.

C: I… I don’t know. That seems a little rude. I don’t do that with Lady Louise.

W: And it’s great for you that you got a bird that loves you or whatever, but I don’t have the time to play around with all that. I got things to do. Can’t be tussled to spend hours and hours training a bird we can’t feed up here. Better to let them handle their own everything down below whenever they want and just call one if I need it.

C: I guess… you make a good point about the, uh, about the feeding.

W: Yeah, don’t want a bird taking one of the chickens. Those are way more valuable than any one of my hawks. To us, anyway.

C: Yeah, I - I suppose that’s fair.

W: Alright, your bird’s far enough off now. Should be, anyway.

C: (nervously) Yeah, probably.

W: Alright, so what you’re gonna do is sort of… feel where your bird is, and reach out, and grab her and pull her in.

C: I… what?

W: I can show you, but I’ll have to root around in your skull a li’l bit.

C: Oh geez. Okay. I mean, uh, I’m not sure - I’m not sure about how that will -

W: Not _ physically! _

C: Oh. That’s - okay. Right.

W: Kid. Come on.

C: Sorry, I - ! I don’t know what I was thinking.

W: (laughs) Gimme your hand again.

C: Mmkay…?

W: Alright, now follow my lead. I’ll show you what to do. You reach out, yeah, like this. Yeah?

C: Um. Maybe?

W: It’s magic, kid. You do things like ‘reach out with your mind’ in magic.

C: Yeah, I mean… I don’t want to just, say it like that -

W: Why not? That’s what it is. Plain an’ simple. You’re doin’ a little bit of magic.

C: I guess. That just seems… I don’t know. Overly mystical or something.

W: It’s _ magic, _ it’s just another thing you can do sometimes. Nothing special or weird about it.

C: I guess?

W: So reach out and feel for your bird. Where’s she at? You tell me, and I’ll tell you if you’re right.

C: Uhh… to the, to the southwest?

W: Good, that’s right. How’d you pick her out from everything else?

C: Wh - everything else? She’s the only thing there.

W: ...okay, that’s kinda weird, but maybe that’s just how you work. Alright, well, grab her and pull her back.

C: That - that seems needlessly violent. What if I just, um, ask her nicely?

W: Oh, right, you’ve got a _ trained _ bird, so that’ll work. Yeah, sure, do that.

C: Lady, c’mon back now, y -

W: She can’t hear you.

C: Right.

W: I mean, you can say stuff, but you’ll just end up lookin’ like a lunatic talking to nobody.

C: Right. Right. Noted.

W: Did you call her? I thought I felt a little baby shiver of a pull from you.

C: I think I did? I - I don’t know, I probably did it wrong -

W: Nah, nah, nah. Feel for her.

C: Huh?

W: In your mind, feel for her. Where’s she at?

C: ...oh, she’s coming back!

W: That’s right. Good job, kid, you called her back.

C: I did? I did!

W: Uh huh. Now you can do that. Kinda wondering why you can’t see anything but her, but I guess we all have our unique little weirdnesses when it comes to magic, huh?

C: I called my bird!

W: (chuckling) Okay, kid. 

C: Oh, wow, I - thanks for showing me how to do that!

W: I mean, I really think any halfway decent handler should know how to do that.

C: Thank you so much! Ah - here she comes! Tch, Lady Louise! Here!

W: She already knows where you are, you called her…

C: Here! And

(sound of wings)

C: - _ oof _, big landing, huh, lovely Lady? Yes, you’re my favorite! I love you.

W: Why’d you keep her, anyway?

C: Lady Louise? We thought she’d be useful. I mean, I - I might’ve otherwise, unless she wanted to return to the wild of course, but yeah, we, um… we figured she could help us find beasts. Since vultures are so good at smelling, and all that.

W: Huh. I guess so. I guess you need it down there on the ground, huh?

C: (laughs lightly) Yeah, we do… it, um, it’s a problem!

(slight pause)

C: Yeah.

(metallic and plastic clicking sounds)

W: Uh huh. I’m guessing there’s a story there?

C: Yeah. The, um, this was… I dunno, a month ago? And a bit? Alexandre - that's one of our, one of our, um... warriors, I guess? They fight. They protect the town. (deep breath) They, um, they cut my _arm_ off for no reason because _they_ thought I was going to _die_ when a beast bit me on the hand.

W: Your bird didn’t find it?

C: She couldn’t fly yet, she wasn’t on duty. Wish she had been, she can -

(static)

C: - away, up on thermals.

W: And she can smell ‘em?

C: Yeah.

W: Huh. Maybe I should pull some vultures. Can -

(static)

W: - too? They eat dead stuff, right?

C: Uh huh. She’s eaten beast parts before. Vultures have very strong stomach acid and don't really get sick, so...

W: Wow. Tough little thing, huh?

C: Yeah.

W: I’ll look into ‘em. I won’t keep ‘em if I do, don’t look at me like that. I won’t mess with them too much.

C: Alright, if you say so. Um, Mr. Stevensson -

W: Nobody on the planet calls me that, kid. Wolf will do.

C: Wolf. Right. Um, thank you so much for the help.

W: No problem, kid. You got any more questions, you find me. Or a bird, and I’ll show up eventually. (laughs)

C: Sure thing, sir.

W: _ Sir. _ Get a load of that…

C: It’s polite…

W: Uh huh. You got stuff to do, I can see you wantin’ to leave. Go on, get outta here.

C: Right, yep, I should probably - I should probably find -

W: Make sure you practice callin’ her, and you’ll get faster at it, and better. You’ll do it in the blink of an eye without any movement.

C: Yessir!

W: There you go again. Go on, shoo!

(end of recording)


	14. Broadcast Eleven - Recorded November 24, 2097

Well, I… have some apologies to make, specifically to one, um… to one - to one Alexandre Callait.

My mom once told me that if you wrong someone in public, you need to apologize to them in public. If you wrong someone in private, you make it up to them in private. I definitely, definitely wronged Alexandre in these broadcasts, so I’m, um, I’m apologizing to them now for that, because they definitely definitely did save my life.

I’m Charlie McAvoy. Today is November 24th, and we just left Waygate behind about an hour ago. I, uh, the results of the test I took while I was there came back and, uh… it turns out I am  _ not _ immune to the rash illness! Which is. Great. Just super. And it means that if Alexandre hadn’t just gone absolutely wild on my arm like a month and a half ago, I’d be almost certainly infected and dying right about now, or already dead. Your heart beats fast enough that it would’ve circulated through my entire body by the time Alexandre had killed the beast and gotten me somewhere for treatment. It - it was too late for me the second that thing closed its jaws on my hand, and Alexandre did the only thing they could, and, um, it worked. I’m - I’m fine now. I’m alive. Everything’s fine.

Everything is  _ fine. _

For what it’s worth, they, um… they did tell me “sorry for cutting your arm off.” Actually, they wrote it on a piece of paper and shoved it under my door in the middle of the night. Um, with a - I still have it, hold on.

There’s a - I think this is a drawing of me? Um. Yeah, that’s me, because there’s what looks like wings, and that must - that must be Lady Louise. I, um… don’t ment - um, it’s okay. 

So I - I guess I got my mom’s genes, huh? I guess I got her, um… susceptibility, I guess, to the rash illness. I really - really wish I’d gotten Dad’s immunity, but, uh, alright. We can’t - we can’t have everything, I guess.

What’s- oh, that’s a little bit of static. I think I can talk over this, it’s not bad.

This means I  _ have _ to have someone with me at all times when I’m out and about. Which - I mean, I know, I was - I was planning on that anyway. But now we have to be even more careful.

Though I guess if I get attacked, I can throw my new arm in the way, and they can’t infect me through that. It’s all metal and plastic. The worst a beast or a, um, a troll can do is tear it off, I guess.

And I’m going to have to be, um, a little more - a little more ‘on it’ about wearing masks. Since we know I have to do that now.

Geez, I almost wish I didn’t know. It was less stressful when I didn’t know and I just thought I was immune. But at the same time I’m glad I know, so now I don’t - now I’m sure I won’t just immediately die.

So, um… I’m sorry for badmouthing you, Alexandre, and I am grateful that you uh, that you saved my life.

Okay, that’s over with. That’s over with and I can stop being really guilty about it. Um. Oh, the static stopped. That’s nice.

I… had another dream. And - I know I probably shouldn’t be reporting my dreams to a potentially international audience, but - there’s something about them that seems important. I don’t know what it is. They’re not like - they aren’t like normal dreams. They’re not! It’s, um, it’s more like… like a memory, only of course I’ve never had these memories.

This time I was - it was the same place, with the town, only this time we were on a huge wide plain of this like… golden-yellow grass? It probably would have been really pretty in the sunlight. But it wasn’t sunny out. It was really cloudy, dark and churning like in summer when there’s going to be a thunderstorm but it hasn’t quite worked its way up to it yet.

No rain. That’s for sure. It was perfectly dry. The wind was blowing across the tops of the grass stalks in waves. It reminded me of the grasses we’ve been seeing here, but it was different - it was different. They were taller and warmer and more menacing. The grasses, that is. And it was - okay, I know I said it was warmer, but it was both warmer than here and the wind was colder. It felt… harsh, but muted. This is a whole lot of things that are really contradictory, huh?

Um. There was… the town. It was sitting in one place, in the grass, totally surrounded. There wasn’t any, um - there wasn’t even a trail through the grasses showing where it had moved. It was just… there.

And there was a tree. A dead tree, with its branches hanging over - it was sort of… shaped like a C, almost, all crooked and bent. The tree was kind of far away, but I remember because it was the only, um, really the only feature in the plainslands aside from me and the town.

Coyote wasn’t there. I don’t know why I thought they would be? It’s not like these are… connected, right? I mean - it’s -

Never mind.

I was there, and there was lightning overhead, but not the kind you can see - the kind that’s hidden way above in the clouds, that you can maybe catch the barest flicker of. I looked up for it, and when I looked back down, a black bird of some type. Uh, that was probably a vulture, now that I think about it. That would make sense, huh, wouldn’t it. Now I feel kind of stupid for not picking up on that before.

Um, there was a vulture in the tree. I know it had its back to me, so I couldn’t see the head, and its wings were folded. So it was just - it was just a lump sitting there. Just a black bird. The feathers were glossy but not shining because there was no direct sunlight. Just the clouds and the storm and the wind and the plains.

I thought I heard something speak. I did, in the grass behind me, and I turned, but there was nothing there, and I was going to turn back towards the tree and the bird again but the dream just ended.

I think it ended too early. I think there’s more I was supposed to dream.

Hold on, wait, what does  _ that _ mean? That doesn’t make any sense! That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know why I said that.

Is this some… some  _ magic _ thing, like Wolf was talking about? But I don’t even do the same type of… thing that he does. Did. Does. I’m not sure how magic works, to be honest.

That seems like something I should know about. Maybe I ought to ask more people about it. I mean, I did just ask Wolf, and he taught me how to  _ do _ some magic, which is - which is  _ really _ wild. I can just… call Lady Louise back whenever I want to, now! That’s still so crazy to me. That’s actual magic.

I mean, I know technically what I was doing before, with snakes and things, was… I guess it was magic. But it didn’t  _ feel _ like anything special at all. It was just… I picked up an animal, and said some soothing things to it, and it calmed down really fast and never tried to bite me or musk on me or slime me or anything. That’s all. That’s it. That’s barely even magic at all. The only thing that makes it special was that it happened fast, to any creature I handled, instead of only maybe happening depending on the animal and taking a great deal of time. And then the Lady Louise healing thing, and I mean… that could’ve just been luck.

But calling her - that’s entirely different. That’s completely different. That’s 100% magic, no doubts about it. And that’s so  _ weird. _

Maybe I should ask anybody else with abilities for their opinions. They’ve gotta know more than me about this.

I mean, my dad was the animal handler before me. And he seemed… he never said anything about calling animals from a distance. He had cats, yeah, but he caught those with bait and traps, and calmed them from there. Um, I mean big cats, not - not small cats. Not housecats. I mean big cats, like - cougars, sometimes. Also bobcats, but those are smaller. Not as small as normal cats but pretty small. Um, he had all of them.

With the big cats, those answered to him because he handled them. The little ones just liked him. That’s why they stayed at all. But then… all of them wandered off after he died, and I couldn’t get them back.

…

He - he never mentioned calling animals. I wonder if he could do that? Is - am I different, than, um, are my abilities different from his? I never thought they were in the past. That didn’t make a whole lot of sense. But…

Wolf said he could see through the birds he called. I wonder if I could do something similar with Lady Louise?

She’s flying right now. I’m still nervous, really, about that, by the way, because I worry she’ll get lost, but so far she’s always responded when I’ve called her back to the Outpost, and I’m sure I’ll get more used to mentally calling her with time. I really shouldn’t worry too much about that. Like Wolf said, she’ll answer if I do. She always has before, in the, the times I’ve tried. She will again.

I wonder if I could see through her eyes.

That… doesn’t strike me as something I’d be able to do. Um, I’m almost certain my father couldn’t do that. But if he couldn’t  _ call _ animals either, and I  _ can… _

It’s worth a try.

Uh, let me just - you know, there’s nothing really stopping me from trying that right now, so, uh - give me a second -

...

…

O-kay, so, that works.

I’m gonna have to bring that up with Hanna. Lady Louise just got a lot more useful.

That’s - that’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever felt. By far. I was… it was like I was still here, but also, my viewpoint was… hers. Way, way up above, looking down on the landscape. The only other time I’ve seen the land like that was - well, was when looking out from the edge of Waygate. Like a bird, so far above it all. But this time without the fear of falling.

I’m going to have to try that more often. See what I can see. Oh, man, this is - this is  _ super _ exciting, this is huge news! I can  _ scout! _

I can be useful now!

Hey, stop doing the static thing. I’m trying to celebrate!

Wow, I guess this is a lesson of sorts. If you’re out there, and you’re a, you’re a practitioner of some sort, and you haven’t ever really gotten a handle on what you can do, why don’t you try out some new stuff? Maybe some of it will work! Apparently you could have powers you don’t even know about that you can just start doing out of nowhere!

Though to be fair I had a good teacher. Thanks, Wolf!

This is the greatest. Right now, um, Hanna is our only scout, and she’s still technically borrowed from another town, she’s not really  _ our _ scout. She’s just here because we didn’t have anybody else who could sense things coming and protect us. She can sense where trolls are and if they’re approaching; she can see them and hear them, though I don’t know… what it means to ‘hear’ them, really. I’ve never - um, I’ve never heard them. Obviously. And she’s never really gone into detail about that, just stayed quiet after mentioning it.

But she’s the only one that can sense them. I guess because - well, she’s said in the past that she’s seen them all her life, but just, also because she can see spirits. Apparently. I never - okay, to be honest, I never really believed her, but also, I didn’t - I didn’t  _ disbelieve _ her. But now I’m wondering maybe she’s right, and that really is how she spots trolls and beasts from a distance. Maybe she smells them too, but not as well as Lady Louise does.

But she can’t see them from above, not like I can now. I can use Lady Louise to see… well, far. Really far. And if she focuses in on a troll or something, I could… I could tell everyone else what it is while we’re still miles away!

Oh, man. Oh  _ man. _ This is the greatest news I’ve ever gotten. This is the best day ever. I have to - I’ve got work to do, I have to cut this short.

_ Wow. _ Alright, I’m Charlie McAvoy, sorry to cut this short but I really really gotta go and figure out how best to use this ability now. I’m Charlie, and I hope that you know, out there, that you are not alone. Thanks for listening!


	15. Broadcast Twelve - Recorded November 30, 2097

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can figure out where this is, I will be very impressed lmao
> 
> I got the flu (the vaccine did not protect me this year rip, wish I were immune to all normal illnesses like Charlie is) but I have a backlog written so don't worry, there's plenty of chapters to come still.

Earlier this morning, we caught our first glimpse of a river. I got really excited, because I thought it might be - I thought it might be the big river, you know, the one that goes through St. Louis, but we didn’t see any city anywhere. Turns out it’s not the big river. It’s a smaller one; I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s not frozen yet, and that is, uh, real bad news for us. Real bad news.

I’m Charlie McAvoy, and today is November 30th, as near as we can tell. We’re still headed towards St. Louis. Slowly.

The land is pretty flat. I spotted the river from Lady Louise’s eyes a few miles away, and we arrived here at about noon. We’ve been following an Old World roadway, obviously, because those are the best way to traverse the landscape ‘cause there’s the fewest trees in the way, especially when the road is raised a little bit. But then of course you also have to worry about it, um, collapsing.

Um, that’s not the point. The point is we found about two bridges that go over the river in any reasonable amount of time or space, and we’re real leery about, um, trying those… I just don’t trust them. They’re - I don’t trust them.

Hanna is out now checking them out. I am… not allowed to go out, but I have Lady Louise overhead, and I’m keeping an eye on the proceedings. Which I can do. If she fires a shot we’ll know it’s not safe, I suppose? But there really haven’t been any trolls around this area. There is the remnants of a town, but, uh, it was tiny, from what I can tell. And I can see it from above!

It was tiny. I bet everyone here immediately died or immediately left at the end. Or maybe they didn’t, I don’t know. The point is, there aren’t even trolls left here - hey, can you quit with the static? Stop that. Stop it!

…

...are you done? Are you done, you horrible little device? Okay, so I can keep talking now. Ugh, this  _ thing. _

Hanna said the town was mostly safe aside from some stray beasts -

Stop with the static!

...Hanna said that the town was mostly safe aside from some stray beasts, and our main worry is the river. I believe her. I think about this sometimes - I mean, I’ve seen old maps of the worlds. And there are a lot of countries that are, uh, a lot  _ smaller _ than this one. What happened to all the people in those? If there were so many people, but not miles and miles of empty space between them? Did you all… did they all die, way back at the end? Are there any of you left, elsewhere in the world?

Is that why it’s so quiet out there?

Geez, that’s morbid. Um, I don’t think that it’s reasonable to say definitively that the rest of the world is dead and gone. That we’re all that’s left. Even though it feels like it. If we really believed that, we wouldn’t be making these broadcasts! Haha.

I know there have to be people alive and well in Canada. The place is so cold all the time, I don’t - no, wait, moose live up there. Never mind, everyone’s probably dead.

A normal moose is bad enough and I’ve seen one once. I can’t imagine a beast or troll moose. I really, um I don’t  _ want _ to imagine one.

If - if you’re from Canada, or you live in Canada, and you hear this, uh… I guess, call us back, yeah? On this radio frequency? If - if you can. Please. I’m not - I’m not totally certain how radios work when they’re big ones like the one we’re hoping is in St. Louis, but maybe you can reach us if you hear us. Please do.

We want to know that you’re there.

So, anyway, the river. I’m - so I learned I can watch from above and also do things at the same time, as long as I don’t have to move around to do them, because obviously I can’t - I’m not looking at what I’m doing, I’m looking through Lady Louise’s eyes. So right now I have the recorder out, and I’m also, um, I’m looking - I’m looking down at, uh, the forest and the river.

I think I see Hanna. She’s on one of the bridges - yeah, that’s her coat. White coat. Even though everything is white and brown right now, I can still see her moving through it. It’s easy to spot her, somehow? Which is weird. I guess that’s just what being up above does, it lets you see things easier. Before I could never see her unless she was right in front of me, not while she was out and about. She’s really stealthy.

That’s probably part of her being a scout. I don’t know where she learned that - I guess in Sigmund’s Crossing. That’s where we got her - um, it’s a, it’s a town a ways south of here. Not too far. I know we’d gone over it once before, when I was really little - like, twelve years ago, when I was five or something, I don’t really remember it - and when we, uh… when we had to find a new, a new… protective measure, I guess, for the town, a couple years back now, we remembered the scouts there and happened to be kind of nearby, so we went for it. I don’t really recall that a whole lot, a lot about that particular situation. I, um, wasn’t paying attention.

From what I remember - which isn’t a whole lot - the Crossing is one of a bunch of towns who all sort of do the same thing, and that is, uh, maintain bridges. Large enough bridges for moving towns to get across. They break the middles out to make it easier for moving towns to go along and keep the trolls and beasts away, and moving towns give them supplies and carry messages for them in return. I was kind of hoping we would find one where we are now, but, uh, no such luck. And the area around this river is really just riddled with ponds and swampy areas, so we’re having… a bit of a tough time finding a way across.

But, uh, the Crossing. And getting Hanna. I don’t remember who arranged this - probably one of the elders, I’d guess? That seems like the kind of thing Carlisle would have a hand in. Yeah, it was probably him. Carlisle is good at dealing with people. He’s really old - he was born and raised in an area that was free of the illness for like twenty years after it first arrived on the continent, so he remembers how things were before it hit his area, which is… a rare thing. It’s strange to know someone who has memories like that. I can’t imagine a world without the danger of the rash illness just around the corner at any moment.

He must have gone in, he probably took a few people with him. The town was really sketched out by us asking for one of their scouts, but when we told them what had happened to Dad they agreed and sent Hanna with us. 

You can’t… you can’t have at own that doesn’t have any sort of protection. You can’t. If your town has no protection or scouts, you are all going to die. Dad was our only protection, and since we weren’t - um, prepared for his death, we, uh, had to - had to find something…  _ real _ fast.

I think Carlisle and the others weren’t expecting to not have me take over for him. But, um… well, we can’t all have what we want. I tried to find cats to handle but i couldn’t maintain control over them and just got scarred up for my trouble. So, sorry. Retroactively.

That’s not important. That’s just where we got Hanna, and she’s been with us for a few years now. Though I think if I get good enough with Lady Louise, it might fall to me to scout instead. But, uh… I don’t know if I’ll be as good as Hanna. I think the town needs more than one method of protection anyways. I don’t want Hanna to leave.

Partly because what if she does and then I can’t do it by myself? I’m one person with one vulture. I’m not a guy with sixteen assorted mountain lions and bobcats and a lynx who all independently do their own thing but all answer to one source and keep the town safe. I’m just one person with one vulture and that’s only one pair of eyes and I don’t have special troll vision like Hanna does or anything.

Uh, if you’re located in the Midwest, and you’re hearing this, and you have special troll vision, you’re more than welcome to, um, to come to KMOX and join the Outpost, because we need another - another someone. To help protect us. Also, if you’re out there and alone, maybe you need a town to stay with. A town of people to help protect and feed you in return.

That’s what we do in the Outpost. It doesn’t matter who we are, everyone here is important, and we’ll protect and help each other. That’s what good people do.

Oh! I remember I was - last time I had yet to ask Hanna about the dreaming thing.

I did ask her. I asked, um, did she have strange dreams, because of magic or - or whatever. She said… sometimes.

Her magic is, um, different form mine. Which - which we already knew. Obviously. But… hers are different. In them, she hears the voices of the lost.

I don’t know if I hear those. I would say I definitely don’t, but that’s not true. Sometimes, I hear… it’s almost like static, a bit? Not just through the -

...yeah, just like that. Static. Like the big freaking spike the recorder just picked up. I hear things like that, but I thought - to be honest, I thought it was a just, like, a hearing problem. But, uh… now I’m starting to think something else. Now I’m starting to wonder if it’s them.

Hanna asked me if I’m a mage. I said… I mean, I guess? I’ve always had my animal handling sort of magic, but , uh, I wouldn’t - I wouldn’t call myself a mage, per se. Is that a term I can even use? Is that the same sort of - sort of thing that Hanna does? Our - we’re very different, so we have to have different names, right? I don’t know. I don’t - I don’t know. I think…

...I’m not sure. But - I told Hanna what I saw in my dreams, and she said… she said that what I saw sounded like another being. That it sounded like an old god. 

I… it  _ felt _ old. I’m not sure. But it also felt - I mean, I don’t know what god that could be. If I knew that, maybe I could tell you more about it. Them.

Also, why would there be a god in my dreams?!

I can’t help but think about the - about the thing Coyote said. Um, the - “She’s got your back.” She. Someone or something. Maybe Hanna’s right, and it’s a god. Haha! I don’t know!

My life has been really weird lately. I mean, nobody’s life is normal, not here in the States, but, uh, ever since we started moving towards the radio station it’s gotten just, you know, a lot stranger. A  _ lot _ stranger. I’m not one who really believes in fate, but geez, maybe we weren’t supposed to do this.

Too late now, we’re not stopping.

That feels really bold to say. But I think we’re doing a good th- whoa! Holy - whoa! Down, now, alert her!

I’m seeing - I’m still looking through Lady Louise’s eyes, and there’s something in the river. Hanna doesn’t see it, I don’t think. She’s, she’s moving  _ towards _ it -

I’m sending Lady Louise down to fly in front of her and then in the direction of the Thing and then back, and hopefully that’ll, um, get the point across. Aw, geez, come on - sorry, Lady, lovely Lady, I know you’re not meant to  _ dive _ and stuff, you’re a vulture, but we really need to let Hanna know that something’s coming. It looks like - it almost looks like if the river were rising up and -

I have no idea what I’m looking at. Lady’s in front of her, now I’m sending her back and forth. To show there’s something there. I can even have her hiss - have Lady Louise a little bit, yes…

She’s holding out her arm. I’ll have Lady land. She must want to - oh, she’s speaking. Um, one second. I’ll repeat it.

…

Okay, she’s asking if I’m seeing that, and she pointed towards the - the thing. The weirdness. The water. I’ve had Lady Louise make a noise, hopefully she’ll, um, hopefully Hanna will know that that’s - um, a yes.

…

Hanna says - Hanna’s saying that it’s a, um, an omen. I’ve never seen an omen. She says that she can see it too. Can she really see all this - it’s like, it’s like a wave of water, sweeping down and crashing against the banks and ripping the trees up. But not the real trees, just images of them. Like ghosts. It’s coming for the bridge now.

What does this mean?! Don’t omens mean things? I… I don’t understand.

I’ll have to ask her about this. She’s not saying any more now. I wish I could talk to her somehow, like - like through a small radio, or something. Can’t right now, though. Maybe I’ll ask the mechanics about that, maybe they know a way to make that possible. I guess I’ll send Lady Louise up again…

Eugh. The omen reached the bridge and went over-top it, through Hanna. Lady Louise flew over it, but just barely. I don’t know why I tried so hard to have her avoid it. It’s not r - it’s not a physical thing, it’s just a, just an image. 

You know how sometimes you have a dream, and it feels just… real? This is the opposite of that. This is real, and I know that it is, but it just… it feels like a dream.

Hanna’s moving over the bridge now. It’s small, but if we’re careful, we might be able to take the town over it. Maybe. This is gonna be rough. We’ll have to rotate the treads and go really carefully if we want to make it without tipping off the side. The town is pretty strong, but it’s not as solid on the bottom as we’d like, because it just - there’s no sheet metal big enough in all the world for that. Well, there might be, but we don’t have it, that’s for sure. So if a tread goes off the bridge, it’s going to pull part of the town down with it, and, um, we don’t - we don’t want that. Hypothetically we could try to just ford the river but it looks really deep and also I don’t think we want to if we can avoid it.

It looks like Hanna’s checking out the, um, the underside of the bridge. For structural stability probably. If she finds it sturdy she’ll probably have us go that way. We might have to… looks like the little road blockades they used to use to keep people from driving off the bridge are still up in some places. We’ll have to break those out, which will be… a pain. But it’ll get us across the river, which is what we need. There’s definitely no other bridges for a least a few miles in either direction, so unless we want to make one hell of a detour… 

I mean, there’s one, uhh… maybe seven miles to the north? As the river flows anyway. But it only has one bridge, not two, and um… these bridges run right past some old town but that one leads right  _ into _ a town. That town is smaller, but -

Listen, one of these doesn’t work, we’ll check that one out. And if that doesn’t work… uhhh… well, there’s another one next to a huge rectangular lake about ten miles to the south. I sent Lady Louise downriver and spotted it earlier but figured - well, Hanna figured it would be best to try these two. First.

She’s the scout, she’s the expert. I don’t know how to - um, I don’t know how to tell a good bridge from a bad one, really. I bet she could tell me though.

If I want to - if I want to replace her, I’ll have to learn. Oof, I don’t like  _ that _ idea at  _ all. _ But she has to go home someday, right? She has to - to go back to Sigmund’s Crossing. That’s where she’s supposed to be. Not with the Outpost.

Oh, let me pop back into my eyes and see the power on the recorder - oh  _ crap, _ it’s blinking. Okay, it’s blinking. That means it’s almost dead. I gotta end - uhhhh I’m Charlie McAvoy, thanks for listening, and I hope that you know, out there, that you are not alone. I’ll see you next time  _ I gotta turn the recorder off or it’s gonna delete - _


	16. Broadcast Thirteen - Recorded December 4, 2097

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The river was the Kaskaskia River, running through New Athens, Illinois. Very small town. Not very dangerous.
> 
> I'm swapping up the format again a little bit. I'm going to be experimenting with how the audio works from here on out, because I've found some styles I like better, so there'll be a bit of a change in the way the fic is written. I'm having fun with it.
> 
> Updates will probably come a little less frequently since the semester's starting up again, by the way. Sorry about that.

We crossed the river a few days ago and kept heading towards St. Louis. Last recording I think - I don’t remember, but I think - I was talking about bridges and stability and how to get across them. We had to break the concrete divider out, but the more northern of the two bridges in that wreck of a city - town, really, it wasn’t a city - worked for us, and we... managed to get across it. We survived, we didn’t lose anything on our way across, everything’s fine. We’re on our way.

I’m Charlie McAvoy, and it is… December 4th, 2097. It’s snowing again. Lady Louise doesn’t like flying in the snow, and she doesn’t like the cold too much, but our gifts of food keep her happy enough to go scouting for me.

I’ve gotten much better at controlling her. I can just nudge her very gently, if I want, and I can almost… I can’t  _ feel _ what she’s feeling, but I  _ know _ what she’s feeling. Physically, I mean. Not emotionally. I don’t know what she feels emotionally. I don’t know if - is that possible?? I mean, I don’t… Maybe it is, but if she does feel things emotionally, I don’t know what they are.

She doesn’t seem to mind going scouting too much. She hasn’t bitten me since way back at the beginning of the trip, when I first found her. She doesn’t seem to want to anymore, I guess. Which I’m really happy about! I like my bird a lot.

Well, I guess that isn’t strictly true. About the biting! I mean. About the biting. But she’s only given me little friendly nibbles. Which is just what birds do. I mean, they don’t have any hands. How else are they supposed to react to the world?

That’s my good girl! Yes, you’re  _ wonderful. _ Yes, I’m talking about you! Oh, you can clack your beak at me all you want. I love you.

A-hem. Lady Louise has been even more useful than ever. The landscape is sometimes flat, sometimes rolling. We’re too far north for the, um… for the real Great Plains, but the great plains expanded a little bit after the desertification spread of the century right before the end. Which I, I didn’t, um… realize was a thing, until I read that there was supposed to be a lot more forest up this far north.

It ended up helping them, you know. The, um, the people in the Final Century. The desertification helped them. The beasts… they didn’t like it. The prairies didn’t give them enough shelter. The open plains, the grasslands… the grass doesn’t block the sunlight like trees do. They couldn’t hide from the watching eyes of the sun and moon and stars then. Honestly, if the rash illness hadn’t…

… if it - if it hadn’t…

…

Oh, come on, I got distracted there for - for a second, but that wasn’t an  _ invitation _ to get all kssh-ksshh-ksh with me, you… ugh. Man, this old recorder. I wonder if I can find a better one back at the, um… no, just  _ at, _ what am I talking about, just at… at, um, the radio place? At KMOX? I bet there’ll be one lying around somewhere. Right? There has to be, it’s a radio place! Station! Maybe not though.

What was I saying? I don’t remember. Something about… the land? Oh, right. The landscape. The desertification. The, um… the natural limitations.

From what I could gather - and the Last Library had a lot of records that Marsha read through and memorized I guess or something, maybe copied down - the, um, the country that existed here before the end kind of… it did a really good job of defending against the rash illness. To the point where it wasn’t really spreading, at all, after a few years of really intense quarantine regulations. And it was fine! Everything was fine! And then out of nowhere it, um… it popped up in the middle of the country, in the Great Plains. In the middle of the place they’d burned for miles around to make safe. A-and just spread out from that like a - like a wildfire. They weren’t ready for it, and, well… now nobody’s left except the few who escaped and the few who are immune, and nowhere is safe.

Apparently. I don’t - I don’t know if I really believe that, I mean… it seems kind of far-fetched to me, right? It has to have come from somewhere. It doesn’t just - sicknesses don’t just appear out of nowhere.

...though that is what happened with the rash illness to begin with. I think. I remember that Martha said the records show that it started in Europe somewhere, because some people who had it showed up on a boat, and they didn’t know who those people were or anything but they just kind of… appeared, and then from there everything went downhill.

I’ve heard people here say that they were the avatars of Pestilence. Whatever that means. I think it’s an old god, or something? An old god who, um… made sickness, I guess. Or - or maybe it was just a spirit, of some sort, like an - an avatar of sickness, maybe. I’m not sure. Records from the end don’t really have, uh, that much in the way of specifics when it comes to what those are. You know, it’s odd - people just talk about things as if we’re supposed to know about them. Like it’s common knowledge. But it’s not, not anymore, and so the things they all just knew are total mysteries to us.

Anyway, um, Pestilence. An old god or something. I - I don’t know if I believe that. I mean, the gods… the gods don’t like the rash illness, as far as I remember. I mean. Not that I have that - not that I have that much experience with them. Ahaha… but, um, from what I’ve - from what I’ve  _ heard _ the gods generally don’t like the rash illness. I mean, my dad served the Dove, and they - the Dove, that is - really didn’t seem to like it, um, judging by the fact that they gave him the power to - to control animals that he could use to keep the beasts away from the Outpost. And he couldn’t get the illness either, you know, blessed by the Dove and stuff. All that. Though - um, though, of course, not all… not all people who have any sort of power are, uh, are immune. I’m - I’m not.

I still don’t like thinking about that. That was - that was too close. It was too close. I would’ve died if not for Alexandre and -

… if not for Alexandre.

Um. The Dove. It makes sense they’d hate the rash. After all, they deal with life, and, well, the rash illness kind of… snuffs out the life in everything it touches.

Or corrupts it. But the Dove doesn’t want that either, obviously. The Hawk doesn’t want that. The - I don’t know of any gods who  _ do _ want it. Who would. But people used to say - um, back, during the end, I think - they used to say that the rash illness was punishment for… something. Was us being punished for not behaving the right way.

I never understood that. It’s not like we learned anything from it, except how to survive in the face of something so great and terrible that it almost overwhelmed us forever. What’s the point of punishment if you don’t learn anything from it?

So, uh, call me crazy, but I - I don’t think that the gods are behind the rash illness. I don’t think they would be. And if there is a god behind the rash illness, it’s - it has to be a, one that’s different from the rest of them. It’s not the same. I know that. That’s - I know this. It just doesn’t make sense otherwise.

I don’t know why I’m so sure of that, but I am. I’m absolutely certain of it.

That just makes me wonder… what  _ is? _ Hah. I guess that’s, um, that’s a question that a lot of people have been asking. Not a new question. They’ve all been asking for a hundred years now. I don’t suppose anybody will find the answer in my lifetime. I mean, it would -

(sound of a door opening)

UNKNOWN VOICE (UV): Charlie, what are you - oh. 

CHARLIE (C): I - um -

UV: Sorry.

C: N-no, it’s - it’s alright. Um.

UV: Didn’t mean to disturb you.

C: It’s okay, I was, um… I was just - just recording.

UV: ...I see that.

C: Um. That’s all. Just… recording. 

UV: On that?

C: ...yeah.

UV: …

UV: Huh.

C: Um -

UV: Thought it was larger.

C: The re - the recorder? It, um, nope. It’s - that’s all. This is it.

(breathy laugh)

C: This is the whole thing. Um, just a little - just a little box.

UV: Huh. Weird.

C: I - is it?

UV: A little bit. Crouching in a closet talking to a metal and plastic box.

C: ...I g… I’m, um, I wasn’t crouch- 

(rustling cloth)

UV: …

C: Uh, sorry.

UV: Not sure why you say that. I don’t care if it’s weird.

C: Oh. Um. Alright. Well, uh… did - did you… need… something?

UV: No. I didn’t know you were in here.

C: Oh. I-I’ll try to, um, bring my - my voice up in the future? If that would help? So - so you know where I’m at?

UV: No.

C: O-kay. I’ll -

UV: I’ll leave you to it.

C: Okay.

(sound of a door closing)

C: …

That was Alexandre. Sorry. I - damn, I don’t want to… I don’t want to re-do it. I don’t even remember what I said just now. Uh, I’m just going to - I’m just gonna stop. I don’t remember what I was doing.

...why was Alexandre even looking in here…?

I - never mind. Never mind, it’s not important. I…

(heavy sigh)

Never mind. I’ll get back to the, um, the statement I was making after I re-listen to this later. There’s still plenty of power, but I think they were looking for me just now, so I’m going to - I’m going to go find them.

Stay tuned, I suppose? I’m Charlie McAvoy, and I hope that you know, out there, that you are not alone. Keep your ears open.

That’s a - a weird statement, now that I think about it. An odd phrase. We don’t, um… we don’t have ears that can shut.

(a pause, a sigh)

(end recording click)


	17. Broadcast Fourteen - Recorded December 12-13, 2097

(click of recording start)

CHARLIE (C): - sure that it’s out there, like that?

ALEXANDRE (A): Yes.

UNKNOWN VOICE (UV): Look for yourself. Use her.

C: Use - Oh. Yeah, I mean - well, I don’t want to get too close -

UV: It’s not like it can reach.

A: She won’t be in danger. Look.

C: ...okay.

UV: There. Do you see it?

C: I - yeah, I do. What, um… what am I - what am I looking at there?

UV: A beast.

C: What? That’s a normal - that’s just an elk.

UV: No. It’s not. Look closer.

C: What?... Oh.  _ Oh. _

UV: Right. Not sure what it’s doing.

C: I… why is it just sitting there?

UV: I don’t know.

C: That - that’s not how beasts behave, normally, I mean - I mean, they, they don’t -

A: I wanted to go and kill it, but Hanna said not to.

UV (HANNA, H): I don’t trust it.

A: It’s a beast.

H: You do not understand. Things are sometimes not what they seem. Sometimes beasts do not work on their own.

(short, sharp bark of laughter)

A: You treat it like some kind of person.

H: …

C: U-um, well, it’s not, and, um… I don’t - I don’t think we’ll have that much of a problem if we just… just shoot it, right?

H: Alexandre. It’s not right.

A: Obviously.

H: No. No, you don’t see. You don’t hear.

A: So tell me.

H: Something - it’s too silent. The beast, it’s too silent.

C: What does that mean?

H: You can’t hear it because your mind is not open to it.

A: No, I’m aware it’s not normal. It got up and  _ moved _ to be in front of us. It’s wrong.

H: It wants us to attack it. No. Not just that. No, it wants us to go out to it. Out there, on the plains. Into danger.

C: I - um, I’m just not going to talk. You guys, um… y-you handle this.

A: It doesn’t _want_ anything, Hanna, because it can’t _think._ _Beasts_ can’t _think._

H: You’re wrong. But there’s no point in telling you that.

A: I’m going to go and shoot it. It can’t kill me, it’s weak.

H: Shoot it from inside the town, then.

A: I have precious few bullets. It’s a long shot. I need to go out.

H: It moves when we move. It stays the same distance away. It  _ wants you to go out. _ If you do, it will be what it wants.

A: What else do you want me to do?

H: Shoot it from the town walls.

A: ...fine.

(sound of footsteps, receding)

C: Um - I’m gonna… I’m going to foll - oh. You’re already -

(sound of more footsteps, receding)

C: ...right.

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

UNKNOWN VOICE (UV1): -ing there, so it should be easy…

UNKNOWN VOICE (UV2): Shhh!

C: (quietly) Alexandre’s making the shot. Or - is about to. I think.

H: It is not moving.

A: Quiet.

(gunshot)

UV1: Oh!

C: Ah -

UV2: My gods in -

H: I see…

C: What - what the…

UV1: It just - just  _ burst _ , like a berry…!

A: ...what.

UV2: Oh - oh…

C: (quietly) The, um… the - the beast is… is dead. I think. I’m pretty sure. We’ll… we’ll roll over and take a look.

A: (shouting, towards something away from the recorder) Get moving!

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

(sounds of snow crunching under multiple sets of boots)

A: There.

C: I - I, um… wow.

H: I do not trust this.

A: Stand back.

C: What are y- oh, that’s - !

(sound of a blade repeatedly thudding into flesh and bone)

C: Dove’s mercy…

(sound of a blade repeatedly thudding into flesh and bone)

C: I - I think it’s, I think it’s dead…

A: Should be, now.

H: Time to go.

A: Where’s the spine? Got to detach it for safety. Throw it away.

H: We need to go.

A: …

C: This isn’t -

A: Look.

H: Alexandre, this is not the -

A:  _ Look. _

(momentary pause)

C: Is that - is that a  _ human _ skull -

H: Go. Back. Now.

A: That’s not right. That’s a beast. That’s a  _ beast, _ that’s not right -

C: No, no, people don’t - people don’t become beasts, that’s -

A: That should be a beast.

H: Back to the town. Now.  _ Now. _

(end recording click)

* * *

(start of recording click)

So. I figured… I figured it might be easier just to try and get the explanation as it happened. Rather than - rather than just summing it up afterwards. I - it’s… um, it’s December the… December the 12th, I think. Yeah. This all happened earlier. As you may be able to tell, the, um… the town’s moving again. We’re on our way.

We had a minor - a minor incident earlier. There was an… um, well, it was an elk once, I think. It looked like one, anyway. It really looked like one. It was sitting in front of the town. About… about a hundred yards off. It was sitting in the middle of an empty field, watching us. When we got closer, though, it got up… and moved back. We paused, and when we did, so did it, and it sat back down. And faced us.

I, um, I don’t think - I don’t think I need to tell you that this is not what you could call... ordinary behaviour. For beasts.

They… they don’t normally… they don’t normally, um… do things with a, a motive.

But here’s - here’s the thing. I don’t know if it was a beast. I mean, yes, it was a beast, it was an elk. But on the inside…

There - Alexandre cut it open. Y-you heard that. You heard us,  _ doing _ ... that. I can make a whole bunch of recordings and broadcast all of them one after another, really easy. So I’ve decided I’m going to try and do that, maybe get - maybe get a little more information than the things I remember while making these.

Alexandre cut the elk open, and inside its head there was a human skull. Inside it were human bones. Human. Not elk. Human. I mean, there were some - there were some elk things too, but, uhh… it wasn’t - it wasn’t all beast.

How did it still look like one, then? How did it still - how did it resemble an ordinary beast while being so…  _ messed up _ on the inside? Humans don’t become beasts. Humans become trolls, or giants. Never beasts. But that - that looked like a beast.

Almost as if… almost as if it were - hiding, perhaps -

(static)

...almost as if it were hiding in a beast’s skin. But that - that’s impossible.

Maybe it was coincidence. I would think it’s coincidence, if not for the fact that it would be, um, a whole lot of coincidences at once. A-and Hanna said something about - about seeing and hearing it? And I know - I know she says things like that. She hears the beasts and trolls and stuff. But she said - she said that this one was too  _ quiet. _ I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what kind of silence - I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but somehow, I’m leaning towards bad. I’ve just got a really bad feeling about it.

I can’t hear like Hanna can. I can’t - I can’t  _ hear _ like Hanna can, can’t see. But I… I feel like I know that, um…

I don’t know. I feel like whatever that is is very, very bad.

(muted static, too low to corrupt the audio)

...I don’t know. I’m worried. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again. Sorry this - this broadcast is going to be so weird. Kind of piecemeal. Bits strung together, like beads on a necklace. But I… I feel like I shouldn’t end it yet. I mean, not give an ending. Not a proper ending. I’ll just - I’ll just turn it off for now.

(end recording click)

* * *

(start of recording click)

CHARLIE (C): So to - to review, what’s happening right now, is, is that - is that there’s -

(slow, controlled intake of breath, and the accompanying release)

C: There’s another one. Um, I should clarify, it’s - it’s the, the 17th of December now. I never recorded an outro for the last thing because - I don’t know. The point is it’s later now and there’s another, another beast. Thing. This time it’s - it’s not an elk, this time, it’s a… a horse. Well. I mean, not anymore. It was once though.

ALEXANDRE (A): We need to get closer.

HANNA (H): That is going to be an issue.

A: Why?

H: (levelly) It is moving when we get closer.

A: Like the last one?

H: Yes.

C: This - um - it’s… further away.

A: I am  _ aware. _

(momentary silence, sound of engine rumbling below)

C: Did - did it  _ learn _ \- 

A: No. No. They don’t learn.

H: But you cannot deny that this is not normal.

A: They  _ don’t _ . Learn.

C: How can we be sure of that?

A: They never have. They never will. They’re just monsters.

H: These ones are… more than that.

A: No. No.

(clacking sound)

H: Can you kill it from here.

A: It’s at least two hundred yards away. The rifle’s not accurate out that far. Even with me.

H: You cannot go out there.

A: We can’t proceed.

C: Are you sure you can’t make it - I mean, you, you’re the best shot we have, in the whole Outpost. Nobody’s better than you!

A: It’s too far. I can’t make that shot.

H: You will have to. If you go out there -

C: I - I think you can do it!

A: It’s too far.

C: I - um, I mean, you’re… you’re one of the best marksmen we know, right? I - I mean even the wild riders knew that you were, that you were good. Joey complimented you, said you were almost as good a shot as she was.

A: (sharply) That doesn’t  _ matter. _ I sighted the thing. It’s too far. I’m going out.

C: Alex, n - Alexandre. It’s dangerous.

A: It’s always dangerous.

(momentary silence; sounds of rustling cloth)

C: Alexandre, listen to me. I - I know I’m not - just listen, okay? If you, if you go out there, somehow, it’s not going to end well.

A: Your concern isn’t necessary.

C: ...okay.

(silence)

(sound of someone moving away)

(end recording click)

* * *

(start of recording click)

C: Hanna, please, listen, it’s, it’s, it’s not going to - it’s not going to go -

H: How do you know.

C: U-um. What?

H: How do you know that something bad will happen. Or are you just afraid?

C: I - I just know. It’s not going to be good. They - they’re in danger. Worse than normal. The danger, I mean. The - it’s - it’s worse.

H: Do you hear anything?

C: No. But I also - I also don’t  _ not _ hear things. That doesn’t make sense. I can’t - it’s not like it is with you. I don’t hear the silence.

(pause)

H: Then what is it?

C: I… I don’t - I just know. Maybe I’m - maybe I’m seeing it? But I don’t, I don’t see it, not like the, um, not like the omen. I’m not seeing it with my eyes. I’m seeing it with my - just with me.

H: Hmm.

C: It’s, it’s easier when I’m looking through Lady’s eyes. We - I see clearer. No, that’s not right. I know more. Two minds are better than one, right?

H: Three.

C: What?

H: Nothing.

C: No, what did that - there they are!

(rustling)

H: They are _ not _ being as cautious as they should be.

C: They - I mean, they saw the skull, why are they not - where’s Lady? Lady, go. Towards them.

H: What are you doing?

C: Watching a little closer. Not - not close enough to put Lady Louise in danger, but - I feel really, really bad about this, like, the situation, it feels sour. Really bad. And I know, I know that the - I know it’s between us and St. Louis. But… 

H: I do not like this. I do not hear anything. From it, or anything else.

C: We’re getting closer. I mean, she is. Lady Louise. Not Alexandre. They’re staying, um… they’re stalking -

H: I can see.

C: Right.

(silence)

C: Are they going to get closer than that?

H: Hopefully not.

C: I… I know we don’t have many shots. I know they have to be careful. But I want them to stay far, far away. From - away from it.

H: (after a momentary pause, slightly unnerved) Are you… sure that you do not hear anything?

C: I, um, yes, absolutely. I don’t - I can’t ever hear the, um, the… the calls you hear. The voices, asking for help.

H: (after another pause, harder this time) How do you know they ask for help.

C: I… I don’t know.

H: How can you know that, if you’ve never heard them.

C: I don’t know! I know I haven’t heard them. I just, I just know, like I’ve heard someone tell me about it before, like, like -

(gunshot)

C: Oh! 

(gentle, nervous throat-clearing)

C: Gods. Okay. See, I knew you - I knew they were a good shot, that was… that was right through the, through the skull. Just like last time. Well, that’s - 

H: It’s not dead.

C: Wh - oh no. Oh no. Why is it able to stand?! Oh n - Alexandre!

H: Alexandre, move!

C: ALEX!

(gunshot)

C: ALEX, RUN!

(gunshot)

C: Lady, go, just - no, don’t endanger, but can you distract -

H: I’m going out there.

C:  _ How are you _ \- and she’s gone. Hopped the wall. I don’t - oh, gods, it’s  _ fast _ -

(gunshot)

C: That’s Hanna shooting now. Gods, we’re going to attract everything for miles around to us with all this noise -

H: (from a distance) Fall back, now!

A: Go!

C: (muttering) Come on, come on…

H: Back!

C: (whispering) It’s charging.  _ It’s charging - _

(gunshot)

(gunshot)

(sharp, horrified intake of breath)

(distant scream)

(abrupt end recording click)


	18. Broadcast Fifteen - Recorded December 23, 2097

Alright. So. I… the recorder, um, died, after we - after the last… stuff that I got. And a… a lot has happened. A  _ lot _ has happened.

(long, deep breath, inhalation and exhalation)

Alex is alive. They’re fine. Well, that’s not true. They, um… they got a little bit hurt. But they - they lived. They’re alive. Our protections - um, the town’s, that is - they’re a little bit, uh, a little bit… weaker, because of that. But, you know.

Um. So I should probably - I should probably explain what happened. And I will. Because I think it’s important, if - if this is really something… new.

I’m Charlie McAvoy. Today’s December 23rd, and we are… getting close, I think, to St. Louis. I think. I - I don’t know. I’m hoping. We can’t - we can’t be that far off.

Alex is… Alexandre is hurt. The, um… the beast? It was like the last one. But it was faster. It was stronger. 

They sh - actually, I’ll, um, I’ll start from… I’ll try to explain the rest of what happened after the recording, the, um… the last one. I listened to it before this, so I know where it… ended. Um. Alexandre left the Outpost while we were stationary, to get a better shot at the b - at the thing. Troll? Saying that doesn’t sound right. I don’t know why.

Right. The - the thing. It was just too, too far away to get a good aim, and it - just like the last time, it got up and walked away every time we got close to it. We  _ had _ to get rid of it, we can’t risk something like that so close to the town. So we - we, we just… didn’t have another option.

(sigh)

I… I wish we’d had another option.

(throat clearing)

They went out and got about a hundred yards away from it for a clear shot. And they shot it. Right through the skull, clean as that. Clean as anything. It was a perfect shot, just like all their other ones. The eyes of the Hawk, you know? Like Joey, I think. Kind of. Maybe a little bit different. I don’t know.

A-and it got up. It fell, at first, like any beast would. The last one kind of… burst open like a rotten fruit, exploded everywhere. This one didn’t. And this one got up again. And I know - I know beasts die when you hit them where it hurts. I-I’ve never killed a beast. I’m not a fighter. Never have been. But I’ve seen it happen, right, and even I know that for beasts, and for most trolls, they go down if you get them through the head. That’s where the brain is. If you, if you destroy its brain, it’s - well, it’s not… it’s not gonna survive that.

I was watching through Lady Louise’s eyes. I saw that monster’s skull shatter. It should have been dead. It should have been dead!

It wasn’t dead. It got up. As if it hadn’t been shot at all.

Alexander got it through the head again while it was moving, which is - was an, a really incredible shot, I have to add, but, uh… that didn’t slow it down this time. It started walking for Alex, and they - they started moving backwards. Not running, because even I know that would be a bad idea. But they weren’t fast enough. They were - they were a hundred yards from the town walls, there was no way to get here in time. And they’d have to get inside. We’re a moving town. Our walls are - our walls are good. I think maybe I’ve never actually, um, mentioned the walls before. To get in you have to go through a set of high gates, up a ramp, because it’s off the ground. And the walls are covered in… uh, spikes, and scraps of twisted metal. Things that cut and hurt anything that tries to get in. Anything we don’t want, I mean.

So, um, getting the - getting inside would be… an ordeal. And we sure aren’t opening the gate while there’s a beast right out there. We can’t afford that. There’s, there are too many people inside who aren’t immune, we  _ can’t _ we - we  _ couldn’t _ have opened it.

Not like it mattered if we had or not. It got to them before they got to the town. Hanna dropped down off the outer wall, jumping off the spikes like they were tree branches or stones and not deadly spikes of half-rusted iron and steel, and she tried to, um… tried to shoot it. She did, her - she’s a good shot. She did hit it. But… that didn’t slow it down. It got close. Too close. Alex - Alexandre, um… it caught up to them.

It caught them in the back with a hoof. It used to be a horse, so it didn’t have claws or anything, but I - I don’t know if you’ve ever met a horse? Let alone a beast… troll-horse. Monster horse. It didn’t have claws, though, not like a wolf or dog or cat. But they’re  _ huge _ , massive and bulky and powerful. It charged at Alex. They did - they did  _ try _ to run. Right at the end. A bunch of failed shots - the bullets didn’t  _ do _ anything to it - and then it just ran up and didn’t stop and it got them right in the back with one hoof, knocked them down.

And then it - gods above and around and everywhere, I hate… I hate to think about it. I know beasts and - and trolls and monsters, I know how bad they are, I grew up in - in America. I grew up in a moving town. I’m  _ well _ aware of how bad the, the… the ones who survive can be. I know how awful they are. But I’ve never… I’ve never seen this.

When it… when it brought them down, it… split open, like a pea pod, and unfurled from the inside. It split right down the middle, from the neck all the way to the hind legs on the belly, and these - these bones, these claws, just opened up from its sides, and -

(a silence, with the rumbling of the town’s engines and shaky breathing)

It… it descended on them. I’d - I’d been  _ trying _ to have Lady Louise fly in front of it, to distract it, but it didn’t  _ care, _ it barely looked at her - and, and I don’t really know, maybe if I’d been a little riskier, forced her to fly in its face - but then its eyes, its eyes, I don’t know if it even saw through them or if it saw some other way and I don’t know if that would’ve worked? And I -

I…

(unsteady breathing)

...I - I need to - okay. Okay. Take a breath, Charlie. Focus. The horse-monster. Tell the story. Right.

(slight pause)

It was on Alex before they could scramble up. Hanna shot it in the inside, and finally, that actually managed to do something. I guess once it opened up it was a little more vulnerable? W-whatever the reason, that staggered it. Hanna pulled out her sword and went at it, cutting one of the, um… cutting off one of the, the main legs, the ones it was using to stand. That took it down to the ground, and it was enough for Hanna to get Alexandre’s arm and pull them free. Of its body. It had gone at them and then sort of… sort of tried to… pull them in. Like its ribs were claws, dragging them, inwards, to be consumed.

(short pause)

When Hanna dragged them out, they were… they were bleeding a lot. I could see that much. But I knew that the monster would be up before the two of them could get to the town, so I…

(deep breath, release)

I tried to sacrifice Lady Louise.

She lived. She’s not even hurt. But I - I know that she knows what I tried to do. A-and I know - I know… I know  _ She _ knows. I, I’ll get into that in a, in a little bit. Um. It was… wrong, to do that.

I forced her - my bird, her - into the monster’s face. I forced her directly into its open front. I - I forced my bird to fly into it, to die, because I would rather sacrifice my beloved bird than let any further harm come to Alexandre. I - that bird, my lovely Lady Louise, was… disposable, to me, at that moment. I saved her in the beginning. And I was just going to let her get killed because I wanted a little less damage to Alexandre. No. I was going to  _ kill her _ because I wanted a little less harm done to Alex.

But - but if I weren’t willing to sacrifice my bird for my - um, for someone I know, to save them, then that’s - that’s not good either, right? Gods. I don’t know. I don’t  _ know. _

What  _ happened _ was n… was not what I expected, um, at all. We, I, um… I sent her in. And I heard Hanna shouting… something. The monster leaped up, and it tried to eat her.

It was like… a pebble dropped into a pond. A ripple that swept out from my vulture, but in… in every direction, not just out in a circle. In a sphere. Everywhere. I, I saw it sweep over the grass, in that pattern, as quick as the wind and half as noticable. And… the monster just dropped dead.

It just died. It - it dropped to the snow. It didn’t move. It didn’t do  _ anything _ after that.

Hanna dragged Alexandre back to the town and we let them both in, and - and Alexandre, we, we took them to the infirmary - er, I mean, some… some other people did.

I… couldn’t help.

I couldn’t record before now because, um… I couldn’t find the recorder. I couldn’t look for it.

After the ripple, my - my vulture, my Lady, she flew off. And I couldn’t call her back. And she, um… she took my sight with her. Not just the things that I know that Hanna was asking me about, or my ability to see through her eyes. I mean she took  _ all _ of my sight. I - I was totally blind. For a little bit. Like, like Wolfgang, but I didn’t… I didn’t have my bird. I couldn’t call another, I-I’ve never been able to do that, and so I was just… that was it. That was - that was it.

Hanna, um… helped me off the walls. And then I, um… I sat around for a while.

(shaky, upset laugh)

What else was I going to do?

Today’s the - today’s the twenty-third. So it’s been… six days, and I got my sight and my bird back last night.

I - I would apologize again for my treatment of her, but uh, - you’ll see. Just listen. Just… listen.

So I, um… I was blind. For a while. And I - I know that’s not really a big deal, and I started to adapt to it, but it was still… it was still bad. I wasn’t ready for it.

Last night, um, I had a dream.

Over the last week I’d - I had been replaying that shockwave in my mind, over and over and over, the last thing I’d seen before it all went dark. That… weird ripple. A-and it’s not the ripple that hit me. My eyes went out a few seconds after the ripple, as I saw Lady start to fly away instead of towards me..

There were a pretty bad few days after that, but I don’t really… I mean, I remember them. I think Alex is doing better than they were then. But I don’t know, I didn’t see the full extent of their injuries. And I couldn’t… I couldn’t just  _ know _ it, like I did with the, um, the unease that I felt when I first saw the monsters. The elk and the horse, I mean.

Last night I had a dream. And I, I recognized it instantly. That… sea of grass, with the town behind me, and the storm above, and that tree in the distance.

There was - the vulture in the tree was back. It still wasn’t looking at me. I didn’t think it would. I stood there, in the grass, and I felt… a hand on my shoulder.

(pause, adjustment in vocal tone)

“Made a bad decision, huh?” 

(return to original vocal tone)

That’s all Coyote said to me. I looked over when they spoke. I wasn’t surprised. Somehow I … I knew they would be there.

So I told them wh - well, they already, uh, they knew what I’d done. I didn’t have to explain that, they already knew. I could see it on their face. A-and I could see it, I could see everything, just like normal. I mean, I told them anyway. I was confused! I didn’t understand - no, I did. I did understand what I’d done wrong. But I didn’t understand why it was wrong, or what I could do to… fix it. They just watched me as I talked and when I finally trailed off and looked around they still didn’t… say anything.

The dream, this time… it felt - it felt much more… real, I think, than the, than the previous dreams. The feel of the wind and the grass under my boots and the lightning somewhere hidden above. And Coyote’s hand on my shoulder. And Her.

She… I saw Her. Finally.

(long pause)

I thought - I  _ thought _ , previously, that I served the Dove. I thought - I mean, my dad did, and I have the s - I  _ had _ the same power he did. Or I thought that I did. But I guess… I mean, well, maybe I still sort of do. I still exhibit the traits of someone who does. But it’s different now.

The Dove is - it’s real, yeah. Of course it is. But it’s not Her. I don’t serve it. I serve Her.

Which I guess I… I didn’t really figure out until now. Stupid, I know, thinking about what everyone’s said to me in the past. I don’t know how I didn’t think of it before. My bird. Coyote’s words. The, the weird specifications on my abilities. It’s because of Her.

Coyote had one hand on my shoulder. She put Her hand on my other shoulder. I looked - I mean, obviously I did, like whoooo’s touching me? Right? Hah. Um. Yes. W-when I turned I saw… She was tall, taller than any person I’ve ever seen, and dressed all in black. All in black. I couldn’t - I couldn’t see any, any skin, or hair, or anything… just the cloth. The veils. The feathers.

Uh, real feathers and fake ones both, like - like some of them made of cloth, and some that were actual feathers, big as my arms. Too big for birds.

She looked at me - turned Her head - and said, “Did you try to abandon me?” Her voice was… it was soft, and it had this - this accent, sort of? I couldn’t really place it. I’ve never heard it before. It was… I’ll try and mimic it, but I don’t think I’ll do a very good, um, copy of it.

And I said “No.”

(from here on, vocal tone is altered to mimic the original speaker)

And She said “No, I didn’t think so. You don’t seem the type.”

“I panicked,” I told Her, then. “I - I didn’t mean to hurt her. She didn’t get hurt. I was trying to save Alex, I didn’t have anything else I could do.”

She looked back to the grass. The tree, with the bird. Overhead, I heard thunder.

“You put yourself before your companions,” She said. “I helped you. But I want you to understand what you would have lost. I cannot give you my eyes and minds as disposable. You must earn them, on your own.”

I think I wanted to say something then? But I - I didn’t really, um, didn’t know  _ what _ to say, so I didn’t speak. I just waited, and listened.

“I’ll give her back,” She said. “But you must promise to be more careful next time. I am subtle. You aren’t yet aware of how to use death. Until you know, it will fall to me to care for you. I cannot do this often. I will have to revoke my power from you whenever my hand is forced. Once you learn it for yourself, it will be your own strength you pull upon, and after you use it, it will be your responsibility to recover. Seek to learn, so that it might come sooner, the day you are your own beating heart.”

Her… now, listen, I don’t, um, have a  _ great _ memory. But I remember Her words. I just… do. She - they’re just so clear, somehow. Like I wrote them myself.

(thoughtfully)

Like they’re stuck inside my head, kind of like… kind of like the lyrics to your favorite song.

I don’t remember what  _ I _ said, though. Maybe nothing. I think I just mumbled some - something about how I understood, though I um,  _ clearly _ didn’t. She laughed. Not a mouth-open laugh. Like a, um, like a simple little ‘hmm-hm’ laugh, you know. Just like that.

And then I guess - then I kind of, uh, processed what she’d said, I guess? And I looked up at her and asked, “what do you mean, power?”

She raised one of her hands. She was wearing these gloves, um, that were this smooth black fabric that was shiny and had like a… like an extra layer of black lace laying over the top. Really old-looking. She looked at the back of Her hand, sort of stretching her fingers out and relaxing them again, a few times. I just waited. Finally She spoke again, and She said, “Death is special. It is sacred. The moment you die is the same as any other moment in your life, save that there will be no more moments after it. My servants will carry your spirit on and away from the world once you are gone. This is how it has always been. The carrion of the world rests at peace once I am able to taste it.”

I started to get, uh, kind of - kind of freaked out. But, um, what was  _ I _ going to do about it? Nothing, obviously. Coyote had let go of me and was sitting on the edge of the town behind me. Just sitting there, saying nothing. I thought about the ripple again. I asked - I asked if She’d been the one to kill the beast that attacked Alex. With the ripple. Ripple isn’t really the right word, I don’t think? But I don’t… know what would be. Wave?

(pause, as if thinking; a breath)

She didn’t give me a straight answer. But I guess it was - it was enough of one. “Some things,” She said, “are beyond my grasp. That is not as it should be. Sometimes, I am able to reassert my control.”

And She looked at me again, then, and I totally forgot about the ripple or wave or whatever because I started to feel… I - I swear I felt like I… like I was going to die. I - She didn’t move, or anything, but I suddenly felt hot, sweaty, like I had a fever. My arm, my left arm, hurt so badly, and my blood burned inside my body, and I didn - I felt my throat close and my mouth go dry and my brain start to - to  _ slow down, _ sort of. And I was so, so scared then. I looked up at Her and I didn’t know what to do, like - like was She about to  _ kill _ me, in my dreams?! 

I fell down. Into the grass. It was really rough, all dry and brittle, and it cut my hands. Both hands, because I had both hands, still. I mean, both flesh hands. That sounds bad. Meat hands? No, that’s - that’s worse. Both skin hands.

Um.

M-moving on. It hurt. It hurt a lot. Not the - not the cuts, the um… the burning. It was like I was feeling all the worst parts of a sickness, all at once. She didn’t do anything, just watched me, and Coyote just watched me, and I couldn’t hold myself up on my hands and knees anymore and fell all the way down into the grass. It cut my cheek, my forehead, and then after a split second of the worst fear I’ve  _ ever _ felt, it… stopped. The burning. Not the cuts. Those stayed there.

Those stayed there when I woke up, too.

The burning was gone, though. The lady watched me as I kind of dragged myself up. I think I asked Her what had happened to me? I feel like I did. I might - might have worded it more like, um, like “what did you do to me” though.

She said “I let you feel.”

I don’t… I don’t know what I said to that. But I remember She moved then, and crouched down in front of me. She was looking at me through that veil, through the multiple veils. I - I really couldn’t see  _ any _ of Her face at all. It was just cloth pulled over like a mask, layers and layers of it, draping down from a sort of crown-hat of feathers and fabric and tugged around her nose and mouth and eyes. There was - there was a brim on this headpiece, like a really old sort of, um… old American fancy outfit or something. That had an extra layer of really thin see-through cloth that drifted down. I don’t know how She could see anything through any of it. But She could. She could see everything. She could see me.

She told me I… She told me that I was alive because of Her. That I’d have died. When I looked down at my hands again I saw my left hand was metal and plastic again. She said that I would have been  _ killed _ by infection. Not - not the rash. No, just… just some ordinary infection, from when Alex cut my arm off. She told me She’d removed it. The infection. The sickness. She said She’d just gotten rid of it.

I believe her, because I don’t - I don’t really have anything else to do. She smiled then. Don’t ask me how I know what Her expressions were, I can’t  _ tell _ you I don’t have - I don’t have an  _ explanation _ for any of this! I don’t! I don’t know.

(pause, deep and shaky inhale and exhale)

The Vulture said She saved my life, because I picked up one of Her servants, and started to serve Her, and she took care of Her own. Takes, I guess. She takes care of Her own.

She told me that She would have my back if I tried to keep doing Her duty. I asked… I asked something about the rash illness. But I don’t think She can do anything about that. She just shook Her head when I brought it up, and stayed silent.

Then She stood up, and She held out Her hand and I… took it. She pulled me up, to standing, and She smiled at me, and she asked me if I was “ready to keep going.”

I said yes, because wh… what are you going - what are you going to  _ say _ in that situation,  _ besides _ yes? I couldn’t n - I couldn’t say no. And I didn’t want to.

When I did She nodded to me, and then She held up Her arm, out in front of Her, in a half circle. Like She was calling for a bird. And She raised Her head. She didn’t really say anything, just whistled, this long, wavery tone. Like, um…

Like - let me see if I can - 

(static)

Like that. Did… did that come through? No, it looks like I got a bit spike of noise there. It was like -

(static)

...twice in a row?

(static)

Uh, o-kay. I’m - you know what, I can - I can play with that, um,  _ later. _ Later.

She whistled. And the big bird in the tree. It raised its head and spread its wings, and they were - they were so massive, I didn’t realize a bird could have wings like that. It spread its wings and it fell from the tree branch into flight and… L - when a bird flies, it goes - it goes fast. I mean, I-I’m assuming we’ve all - we’ve all seen a bird fly. Well, most of us probably. Not everyone can - never mind.

This one flew weird, like all its movements were slowed down, or something. It was beautiful. Graceful. And just - just  _ really _ big. I mean it, this thing’s wings were - one of its wings was the size of my whole body, probably more. It swept over the grass and I  _ swear _ to you that where it passed the grass went down like a big gust of wind had just gone over it, like it… like the very presence of the bird was affecting it. Like the bird’s presence was forcing the universe around it to react.

Um, that’s - that was probably just me being impressed by a really big bird. It swept up with a huge gust of wind and landed on the Vulture’s arm. It was bigger - it had big patches of white on its wings, not like my bird at all, and its whole head and neck were bare, not just the head. I think - I think it was a condor? But it didn’t look… right. Not like the ones I’ve seen pictures of in books. It was different. I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t know what a, um, what a condor actually looks like.

She looked at me, and She said, “Hold out your arm.”

I, um, I feel like maybe I haven’t - haven’t gotten across how big this bird was. Just. It was so large. It was the size of me. I figured it probably wouldn’t, um, I wasn’t going to be able to hold it. So I asked Her if She was, uh,  _ sure _ She wanted me to… do that?

She didn’t answer. So I went ahead and did what She asked. It was - it was my left arm, the, the fake one. The partially fake one. The half prosthetic one.

The Vulture lowered Her arm to mine and that - that  _ giant _ bird started to step from Her to me. As it did, though, it, um… it changed. It got smaller. It wasn’t - it wasn’t normal-sized by the time it put all its claws on me, which is why trying to hold it hurt so much, I think. They pierced right through my clothes and into my skin. Like nails, like - like  _ train track _ nails. But it kept getting smaller while it shuffled around on my arm and shoulder until it was the size of Lady Louise.

And then when I looked up at it, i-it  _ was _ Lady Louise.  _ My _ Lady Louise. My bird, the one I rescued from the riverbank and healed and got bit by and could see through and was willing to sacrifice to save Alexandre. I know it’s not easy to tell one vulture from another one, but I  _ know _ my bird when I see her, and I  _ knew _ it was her.

The Vulture looked at me again. “That’s your best connection,” She told me. “Don’t burn it again.”

I told Her I wouldn’t. I think that was a good enough answer. She nodded, and I… woke up. That was that.

Lady Louise was perched on my roof. I could feel her, but I could also see again, so I got up and let her in. It was only when I passed the mirror - I have one mirror - that I saw that, um… I had those scratches on my face, from the grass. They were scabbed up, but with little beads of dried blood. They were recent. I pulled down my shirt collar too, and yeah, sure enough, there were the claw marks in my shoulder and on my neck. Talon marks? I think it’s talons. Um, punched right into my skin.

I… I mean, I know who She is. She’s the Vulture. I don’t - I don’t really know what She does, but it’s something to do with… with death. With dying. And it’s not with the rash illness. She… I don’t think She has any sort of, um, control over that. I don’t - I don’t know if She ever did.

I don’t… really know what to make of this. If I still haven’t figured it out by the time I’m broadcasting these, and you know more about Her than I do, then, uh, by all means, please contact me and tell me. Because I’m - I’m kind of lost. She told me so much, and I still don’t know anything.

(pause)

(softly, confused) I don’t… what  _ powers _ was she talking about? What - that ripple. The… wave. The shock. Whatever. What does it - can  _ I _ do that? She just - She just killed that monster, just like that. She just made it drop dead, without even really hurting it. Could I…  _ do _ that? Can I...

(pause)

I don’t know. I need to learn more. This was, um, this was all last night. Maybe I’ll dream about Her again tonight and I’ll be in that - in that prairie again, that… sea of grass. Uh, somehow I doubt that, though.

...and what about the whistle? Why can’t the recorder pick it up? What… is…

I don’t know. But I’ll - I’ll have to try and figure it out. I have a goal now. I need to ask around about the Vulture, need to… to find out more about Her. To figure out what She is. What She wants. What I have to do now.

I’m…  _ pretty _ sure I kind of, uh, swore myself to her? Sort of? She definitely - She definitely saved my life for some reason, and so I think I, um… owe her now. That’s how this works. I think. I don’t know. Dove’s mercy, I -

...is it weird to say that? No, I mean, the Dove’s still a god that I can… that I can, um…

(pause, quick breath)

You know what, I’m just gonna… not, actually. Maybe I’ll just - maybe I’ll just keep quiet. Instead of invoking gods. I don’t really want to draw their attention. Since that, um, since that’s a, a thing that I can apparently do.

I have a lot of research to do. And I think we’re getting really close to St. Louis, which has a public library from forever ago. Maybe I can find something there? Probably not. But maybe there’s something in that dead city that can tell me what I need to know.

Guess we’ll find out when we get there. And we will get there.

I’m Charlie McAvoy, and I hope that you know, out there, that you are not alone. Good luck.


	19. Broadcast Fifteen-point-five - Recorded December 25-28, 2097

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slightly lengthy chapter! and this has some good good backstory in it! If you were ever curious about what happened to Charlie in the past... well, now you know a little bit more about their history. It should be relatively clear what happened, but if it isn't, let me know and I'll put a more detailed explanation somewhere later on :D

(click of recording start)

CHARLIE (C): -at ripple, right, and I want to duplicate it.

HANNA (H): I don’t see how you plan on - 

C: (abruptly) I  _ know _ I can do it. I just have to figure out how. And  _ so _ I need a test subject.

H: No. The danger to you makes this entire idea far too risky.

C: Yeah, well, you know what? So does having me not learn anything about what I can do. You saw what She did to the monster. I can do it too. I just have to figure out how. And I’ll help. I’ll go through Lady, search for things from above, search with you. You won’t be alone out there. You find them, or - or I help you find them, and then you grab it. I can look with you. Hell, I can…

(pause)

H: ...can what?

(low static)

C: ...I can find them even without you.

H: Excuse me.

C: I don’t… I don’t actually need  _ you _ to find them. I can do that on my own. I just need you to catch one and bring it to me.

H: No.

C: Not inside the town! Just outside it. I’ll have - I’ll have the engineers stop our movement for a few minutes. I just need to  _ experiment _ a little bit.

H: This is insane.

C: N-no, it’s - no. It’s not. I  _ need _ to test what I can do. I probably won’t even have to get close to the thing.

H: No. That you expect me to be able to capture a -

C: (cutting her off) I know you can capture a beast. You’ve done it before, in the past. You just need a good enough net and to know where it’s going to be.

(low static)

H: …

C: …

H: How did you know that.

C: I... don’t know.

H: Where did you learn about that?

C: I d - I don’t know!

H: …

(low static)

C: How did I…

H: You shouldn’t have. You really shouldn’t have.

C: But I, I, I… did, somehow?

H: You shouldn’t. Back to the point at hand. I’m not catching you a beast.

C: Okay, listen. Hanna. I… I do know you can do it. And I know… I know you  _ will _ do it. I know you did it before. How did I…

C: (to self) How did I know that? How - I just…

(low static intensifies slightly)

C: If I just look… I can see, you -

H: Stop.

C: (stumbling over their own words) You… you knew when -

H:  _ Stop. _

(static intensifies further)

C: (incredulous) You… you helped my father, didn’t you? Before the - I  _ knew _ you were here before he died! I  _ knew _ we didn’t just go and get you afterwards. I can see it, in the eyes of - in the eyes of the skull that sat on his mantle. A bobcat skull. A dead face. I can see through it. I can see… 

H: …

C: (almost sing-song) You helped him capture what was left of my mother. You helped him keep her, in the tank he built in his house. You did that. You thought it was a good idea. Why did you think that?

H: (hissing)  _ Stop it. Now. _

C: No, I want to know. You thought if he succeeded, that would mean… that would mean that someone might still be inside a beast, and you could - you could track down -

(impact of flesh on flesh, and of flesh against metal)

(choking sound)

H: (viciously) You take after your father, it would seem. Making stupid decisions to endanger yourself and everyone around you. Idiot decisions. Stupid, horrible child.

(cloth rustling, boots on metal)

C: (silence, wheezing)

H: Stay away from me. You’ll have your beast on a leash. I hope it  _ kills _ you.

(a whirl of cloth and footsteps moving away)

(harsh breathing, cough)

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

(static screeching)

CHARLIE (C): (muffled) -p that, you awful machine!

(static lessens)

C: And  _ you! _ You shut up!

(snarling noise in the background)

(hissing)

C: It’s fine, Lady. It’s stuck to that stake in the ground. We’re fine.

(hissing subsides)

C: Right.

C: Okay. Recording now. I’m Charlie McAvoy, and this is a test of the Vulture’s influence on the world, trying to see if I can, um… kill a beast. Without weapons.

(low static)

C: I did some… research, I guess? I guess you could say research. Some looking into my own memory. Just to see if I could, um… figure out how to replicate what the Vulture did, to the horse-creature. It wasn’t a beast, I’m certain of that.

(hissing)

C: Hmm? Oh, yes.

(grunt of effort, heavy wet crack of a large stick or pipe on flesh and bone)

C: (voice uncharacteristically harsh) Stay down, you vicious little thing. Good. Now! Back to what I was saying.

(low static)

C: The Vulture sent out some type of… I’ll keep using the word ripple, because that’s what it was. Well. I’m pretty sure I can replicate that, though maybe on a smaller scale, and I went back and sort of… felt around, I guess, for the feeling? For the feeling of it. And I think I managed to locate it, or what felt like it, inside my head. So… let’s give this a try.

C: Oh - and, um, I don’t want to make Hanna go and get a bunch of beasts for me to try this on if I just kill this one outright, so I’m gonna go ahead and, um… just try it out small-scale on some of its limbs, first. If - if I’m right about this, and I’m able to, uh… to small-scale copy the Vulture’s… assertions, then I should be able to direct exactly where I want them and also make sure they don’t get too big. So, let’s give this a shot.

(static intensifies slightly)

C: Alright. Lady, I don’t think you need to move, but if you do, I won’t let you down. I promise. I’ll keep you safe if you have to get near that thing

(clacking sound)

C: Good girl.

(static intensifies slightly)

C: That’s it…

(static chip, loud)

C: Oh!

(clacking sound, and a high-pitched screech from multiple throats, sudden loud movement and rustling sounds, crunch of grass and snow, flapping wings)

C: Ahh -!

(crunch of grass and snow, loud static chip)

(static dies away)

(silence, heavy breathing)

C: ...okay, well, at least we know it works. That works. Small and large both. Um. Getting - um, report on what just happens. F-for the record. I… um, I replicated the Vulture’s influence on the beast’s foreleg, but that, uh, that - that made the beast try to break free of its restraints, which it began to do, so I had to, um… had to -

(nervous cough)

C: Had to put it down. Which - which worked. I - it was just a little version of the ripple, but I, I did it. Just like I saw Her do it. A sort of warp in the air, from a single point, and when it hit that little monster it just threw it backwards. Now it’s dead. I don’t see it moving.

(rustling, movement in snow)

(gentle squishing sound)

C: Yep, no response there. It’s, um, it’s dead. It’s very dead.

(long exhale)

C: I’m going to need another beast, though.

C: ...damn it.

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

UNKNOWN VOICE (UV): Okay. Run this by me one more time?

CHARLIE (C): There’s a nest to the west, dead ahead of us. We’re going to have to curve around north.

UV: And you know this… how, exactly?

C: I can see it.

UV: Listen, Charlie, I hate to, um… I hate to disbelieve you, but your bird is… right there.

C: I…

C: (deep inhale, exhale)

C: I know. I don’t need her to see sometimes.

UV: You lost me.

C: (patiently) I can - I can see it, through the… well, I think it was a lizard, probably, but it got skewered on a spike and now it’s kind of just hanging in one place. The head’s looking towards the mouth of the nest though, and I can see them going in and out at dawn and dusk.

UV: And you said they’re those awful little many-legged little… turtle dog things?

C: Hanna calls them grosslings, yeah. Those are… those are the ones. There’s a lot of them.

UV: (skeptical) And you’re seeing this through a dead lizard skull.

C: ...yeah.

UV: Well, uh… I mean, we’ll have her go out and take a look too, because… because we need to confirm any r -

C: Because you don’t believe me.

UV: I didn’t say that, now. Don’t put words in my mouth.

(pause, slow breathing)

C: Right. Sorry. I, um… sorry.

UV: Don’t be. We’ll just have her check it over again.

C: (harsh) Right. She knows better, after all.

UV: Somethin’ going on with the two of you?

C: No. Everything’s fine.

C: I’ll just… I’ll be glad when she can finally go home.

(pause)

UV: What happened, Charlie?

C: Nothing. Nothing happened.

UV: …

C: Mads, it’s… what would you do if you found out someone had hurt somebody you cared about, but it didn’t matter anymore?

MADS (M): That’s kind of an oddly specific question.

C: Yeah, never mind. Forget I asked.

M: No, I mean… what’d she do?

(silence, sound of engine rumbling)

M: Aw, Jesus, it’s something really bad, huh?

C: Yeah. Yeah, it was.

(silence, breathing)

M: Well, you don’t actually have to say, if it was that bad. But, listen, if you wanna talk, I’ll be here.

C: ...sure. Sure. Yeah.

M: Hey. I mean that. You come chat if you need to, alright?

C: I - … yeah, actually, yeah. Alright. I’ll… I’ll come back later, I think. Will you be around here?

M: It’s the engines. Where else would I be?

C: (short laugh) Yeah. Alright.

C: Keep us headed northwards. Don’t wanna run into the mini horde.

M: Will do.

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

(crunch of snow and twigs underfoot)

CHARLIE (C): (quietly, slightly muffled) Heeeeeere, monster monster monster…

(soft hissing, slight static)

C: Oh? Static on the - you’re nearby, aren’t you?

(slight static)

C: Somewhere close…

(crack of a twig, high-pitched shrieking sound)

(loud static chip)

(heavy thud of something landing awkwardly in the snow)

C: Got you.

(slow, quickly intensifying static)

C: (through the static, voice becoming distorted) I have found out how to stun them. And once they are stunned, I can - I can catch them for further experimentation. Or…

(static intensifies further, wordless, muffled shout of effort)

(loud static chip, all static ends)

(silence, heavy breathing)

C: (panting) Or I can just kill them.

(silence, Charlie’s breath steadying)

C: Just… kill them.

(laughter)

C: Yes.  _ Yes! _

(pause, silence)

C: Right. Um, well, that experiment’s over, so…

(pause, flutter of wings)

C: Lady! There you are. Come on. This one’s dead. We can, uh… we can just leave it here for the others to find. We’re headed back to the Outpost.

(crunch of boots in snow)

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

UNKNOWN VOICE 1 (UV1): -e side, the side, the side!

UNKNOWN VOICE 2 (UV2): Go! Go!

(gunshot)

HANNA (H): Get out of my  _ way - _

UV1: It’s gonna get stuck on the spikes, the sp - there, there!

CHARLIE (C): Back up.

UV2: What?

UV1: It’s  _ coming! _

(faint static growing)

C: Back.  _ Up. _

UV2: Oh, g -  _ oh gods! _

(heavy static)

(scrambling sounds)

(static intensifies to the point of overpowering all other sound)

C: Get.

(audio distorts)

C:  _ Off. _

(static cuts out abruptly)

(gunshot)

(distant voices, mostly sounding confused)

(heavy breathing, cloth rustling, metallic ringing sound of impact on a metal pipe)

UV2: (concerned) J… Charlie, are you…

C: (strangled noise)

UV2: (alarmed) Charlie?!

C: (choking on their own words) I’m - I’m fine. I’m fine.

UV2: Charlie, you’re pale as snow - what did you do -

C: Everything’s  _ fine _ it’s  _ dead _ we need to - to go, before the, uhh, before the, the… the noise brings, um… the… 

UV2: Let’s get you off the wall. Gods, you’re shakin’ like a leaf in the wind.

(several heavy breaths)

C: Y-yeah. Okay.

(stumbling, rustling cloth, uneven footsteps, muffled grunt)

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

(sound of rustling cloth, a few footsteps)

CHARLIE (C): ...hey, Alex.

(silence)

C: You’re out right now, huh? Yeah, that’s… that makes sense. Well, I’m not gonna stick around and, um, wake you up.

(silence)

C: I…

(silence, some soft breaths)

C: Okay, listen, I - I know you told me before the, um… before, you told me not to worry about you. But I - I knew something bad was going to happen, and w-we should have figured out some  _ other _ way to deal with the thing, and now - now we don’t have - I -

(slight pause as Charlie breaks off mid-sentence)

C: ...what I’m saying is that, from now on, I’m not going to stop worrying about you. Even if you tell me not to do it. I’m - I’m going to do more to keep you safe. A-and we’ll be smarter about it. We’ll try to think more, to figure out solutions that don’t put anybody in danger. Not you, not Hanna, not Aysa, not me, not anybody. I’m… not gonna lie, I’m really - really nervous about the, um, about having to go into the city when we reach it, but I think we’ll - I think we’ll be able to handle ourselves by that point.

(silence for a quick moment)

C: It’s not all going to be on you. I’m gonna pull my weight for once. And it won’t be as hard on you. I - I promise. I’m not gonna let you get hurt again.

C: ...you probably don’t even care.

(silence)

C: That’s fine. It’s not really - it’s not about you. I’m doing this for myself, to prove to myself that I… that I’m not worthless. That I can…

C: …

C: Maybe it’s a little about you. But that’s - that’s not the point! That’s not the  _ point. _ I just -

(defeated sigh)

C: I’m sorry. If I’d been a little more insistent, then  _ maybe _ you would’ve listened, and this wouldn’t have happened. But you don’t listen to  _ me, _ I’m just an idiot with a bird and an old recorder. Just… dumb little Charlie, off doing whatever it is they do. Huddling in a closet with a stupid little metal box.

(tired, wounded laugh)

C: Whatever. The - the point is… if things had been different, maybe you wouldn’t be hurt. I can’t really, um… can’t really change that now! So I’ll have to settle for just not letting it happen in the future.

C: I won’t let it happen again. I  _ won’t. _

C: I promise.

(silence)

C: It’s gonna be really, really weird for you when you wake up and find out what I can do now. That I’m… useful.

C: (soft laugh)

C: Well… if you’re curious, I’ll, um, I’ll explain it to you. If I can. I don’t know if you’ll understand. I don’t know if you’ll even want to hear about it. I-if you don’t, that’s fine, I just - I’ll… I’ll keep it to myself and do what I need to.

C: I’ll just… yeah. Just do what I need to.

(silence)

C: ...I’ll let you go now.

(end recording click)


	20. Broadcast Sixteen - Recorded December 31, 2097

(click of recording start)

(distant engine rumbling, deep inhale and exhale)

We found St. Louis.

(long pause)

We did it. We made it. We’re… there.

Well, not - not  _ entirely _ there. We still have to get into the city, a-and find the broadcast center, but… we found it.

Today’s, um… you know, I think…

(pause, rustle of cloth)

I - I think it’s New Year’s. It’s December 31st. The last day of the year.

(a tired, laugh, followed by a sigh)

I can’t believe it’s been… gods, three, almost four  _ months _ since we started this journey. With all the detours we had to make, and the time I spent half out of it because of my arm, and the… everything else... even with all that it still doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. But it really has been an ordeal. A journey.

All so we can try and get these recordings out and try to find someone else alive in the world, beyond America’s borders, the bomb bands. The scorch zones. The places that are both. We entered one of them now, so we had to bring as many of our crops inside as we could and have everyone mask up. There’s not much radiation danger now, but we still don’t want to breathe in any of the dust that we kick up from our passage. This place was scorched to nothing and totally destroyed in an effort to, um, to keep the rash illness out, but of course that - that didn’t work, and there just ended up being a giant swathe of dead earth surrounding St. Louis. It’s recovering now of course. Like, um… like the earth around a volcano after it erupts. It gets better, after a time.

This is still only partly forest, though. There’s a lot of prairie. It’s all buried under the snow right now, so it’s just weirdly flat and open, blank. That’s good for us. Lets us see anything coming from a mile away.

There have been… a few, um, attacks. On the Outpost. Since, since our last sort of, um… encounter. It’s been a little rough. But from the town, we have some pretty good defenses, and that’s been - that’s been letting me get some practice in! 

(nervous laughter)

Um. Yeah. We’ve been keeping as low a profile as we can. Aysa’s been blanketing our movements with snow, which keeps the beasts and trolls in hiding.

We did kill the thing that got Alexandre. They’re not dead, by the way! Um. You might’ve heard me having a, uh… having a - a chat with them before. I, you know. Th-they’re, they’re recovering. They’re gonna be okay. They needed, um, to be patched up a little bit with some - with some probably temporary synthetic materials but they’re going to be fine. They’ll be  _ fine. _

They have to be fine.

(a sigh)

We’re really going to need them. Even with me, with my, um… with what I can do - I won’t be enough. For - for all of us. 

Uh, let me explain. Basically, there’s no way the Outpost can fit in the streets of St. Louis unless they’re really big streets, so we’re probably going to have to park it somewhere and get to the broadcast station on foot. And, uh, I don’t know if I’ll be going, but I probably will, so we’re gonna… we’re gonna want Alexandre with us and in shape to fight. Everyone we can spare who’s in shape to fight. I can - hah. I can take care of a few beasts. But, um, not - no more than that. It, um… it tires me out pretty badly.

(deep breath)

This city is big. Even from here I can see the crumbling buildings, lining the horizon like teeth. A-and that archway. There’s a big sort of… loop thing, by the river. We’re probably going to try and cross near it? I was looking above through Lady Louise and of all the bridges, there was one near it that looked pretty safe. I think tomorrow we’ll be able to have Hanna check it out, and of course I’ll go with her. Um, through Lady. Not - not physically. Definitely not physically. It’s, um… it’s a little bit too dangerous for a non-immune person like me to go wandering around in the city.

Gods, I’m nervous about this. I-I mean, it’s - it’s a city. It’s a  _ city. _ The only city you can safely get into in the entire midwest is Cincinnati, and that’s  _ only _ because of the librarians and their guards. And even then you can’t, you - you shouldn’t go into the rest of the city. And it was one of the ones that got evacuated! So the troll population is pretty low. And I wouldn’t - I would  _ not _ call Cincinnati safe. So to think about going into St. Louis, which was - was  _ not _ evacuated, and which does  _ not _ have anybody in it who keeps any part of it clear or safe, is, um - um… it’s not, it’s scary. I’m scared. Of it. Of what we’re going to do.

But if we gave up now, that’d s- that would be, be  _ pathetic. _ We’re so close. We’re almost there. We have to keep going.

We have to make this worth it. Gods, I hope this is worth it. I hope you’re hearing this. I hope you come find us. I hope you help us reconnect this world.

Though I guess… I mean, if it weren’t for this trip I probably never would’ve found Lady Louise, and wouldn’t have met the Vulture. I guess ‘met’ is kind of a strong term to use there? Uh, encountered. So I guess - I guess that’s… good. That’s something, at least.

I’m trying to think of whether or not I regret having all that happen. Um… I don’t think I do? Which is weird because of how, you know, not into the idea I am. I’m - I don’t like new weird things like  _ bizarre death gods _ that nobody’s ever heard of! Um, sickness gods? I don’t know. I know I can’t get sick anymore. Not normally, anyway. I mean, I’m still not immune to the rash illness, but I think, uh, that that’s not really the same thing as a normal sickness.

(pause, a breath)

Um. Anyway. St. Louis.

I don’t like the idea, but we’re probably going to have to make a, an on-foot expedition to the building itself. The building that holds the KMOX station, I mean. Uh, the physical location. And we’re going to have to take at least one engineer with us, because I’m almost totally certain that we’re not going to magically find the old broadcast station in perfect working condition. That - that’s too much to hope for. I know it is.

Obviously. But I’m - I’m certain we can fix it, whatever the problems end up being. So I’ve been - I’ve been thinking we’ll probably… we’ll probably set the town somewhere safe and -

(pause, short laugh)

Well, I don’t think… I don’t think  _ anywhere _ is safe, not in the city. But we’ll find a place that’s not noticeable. And Aysa’s going to be working overboard to keep us cloaked in snow. Which… well, that  _ does _ mean that we’re going to have to slog through a lot of snow to bet anywhere, but that’s - that sure does beat being, you know, eaten by trolls.

We’re so close. I just - I can’t get over that. We’re so  _ close. _

I… I don’t really have much else to say. We’re going to be heading over the bridge across the river as soon as we can. I’ve done a bit of, um… preliminary scouting, I suppose, you could say? I had Lady Louise do a flyover of the city. There’s a bridge that looks really old, but it looks more stable than the others around, at least as far as I could tell. Hanna’s going to go take a look at it, but I’m pretty sure it’s safe. I can go have a look at it myself when we’re closer. Just to make sure.

I think I can - I’m pretty sure I can, um, pretty sure I can go check it out on my own. Or maybe with someone. Probably on my own, though.

(pause)

I mean it’s not like - it’s not like I’m alone. I have Lady Louise with me. And through her, or - or through me, I guess… the Vulture is with me too. So I’m not alone.

And even if I get attacked, well… I can handle myself. For a little bit. Alex has their gun, Hanna has hers, but I don’t… I don’t need one. I have the Vulture’s gifts. They take a lot out of me, but I can get rid of anything that comes at me. And given the - knowing the, the usual density of trolls and beasts and all that inside cities, I shouldn’t have to do much in the way of… that.

There’s not a whole lot else to say about this. I don’t have much else in the way of, um, in the way of updates. I’ll… you know what, I’ll probably head across the bridge first, before the town, in case it collapses. Don’t want the… the recorder to go tumbling into the river!

We might use the ice. If there’s enough ice. That could still break though so I don’t - I don’t want to risk the recorder.

(pause, sigh)

I suppose I’ll just keep you updated. I’ve… I don’t have anything else to say.

This feels unreal. This just feels… unreal. We’ve actually done it? We’ve made it. By the gods, though, I don’t want to jinx it. And I - I know that we’re not just going to… stroll on in and have our journey be complete. There’s… there’s more here. There’s more… to come, I think.

It’s like… I feel like something’s coming. I don’t know what. I  _ can’t _ know what. But I - it’s like when you feel a storm approaching, right? Gathering, just over the horizon? It feels like that. I might think it’s that but I know Aysa’s not doing anything of the sort, and I don’t think that’s what this is all about. It’s something else.

(deep inhale and exhale)

Something’s coming. I can’t know what. I just know it’s more important than us and our radio station, and that whatever it is, we’re not… we’re not ready for it.

Gods. I hope we can  _ get _ ready. But how can we be ready for something if we don’t even know what it is? I’m the only one who even has this sort of… feeling, I think. I - I don’t think anybody else has, um, expressed anything like this. Gods. I don’t know.

I’m worried. I’m  _ afraid. _ I’m… excited? I… I don’t know what’s going to happen. But it’ll be something when it does.

I’ve got nothing else to… nothing else to say. I’ll cut this off for now. I’ll add more if I can or need to. Thanks for listening.

I’m Charlie McAvoy, and I hope that you know, out there, that you are not alone.

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

CHARLIE (C): Um. Hm.

(silence, but muffled this time by the presence of a heavy layer of snow)

C: Right.

(clears throat)

C: …

(hums softly)

C: (singing softly) I’ll be seeing you...

(faint wind sounds)

C: (singing) In all the old familiar places… that this heart of mine embraces… 

(pause, shaky breath)

C: All day through.

(quick breath, wind has died away)

C: In that small cafe, the park across the way, the children’s carousel, the -

(voice breaks, breath, brief cough)

C: The chestnut trees, the wishing well.

(absolute silence)

C: I’ll be seeing you…

_ In every lovely summer's day; _

_ In every thing that's light and gay. _

_ I'll always think of you that way. _

_ I’ll find you _

_ In the morning sun _

_ And when the night is new. _

_ I'll be looking at the moon, _

_ But I'll be seeing you. _

_ I'll be seeing you _

_ In every lovely summer's day; _

_ In every thing that's light and gay. _

_ I'll always think of you that way. _

_ I'll find you _

_ In the morning sun _

_ And when the night is new. _

_ I'll be looking at the moon, _

(soft breathing, uneven)

C: But I’ll -

(soft sound)

C: I’ll be seeing you.

(silence)

C: (awkward cough)

C: I… That’s, um… That’s only the… the second time I’ve. I’ve done that.

(silence, shaky breathing, a sniff)

C: That was, um… one of my mum’s favorite songs. It’s really old. From the old world, before. After my dad died, I thought maybe I’d… maybe I’d sing it for them.

C: …

C: I d - I don’t know. Maybe it’s stupid. Maybe I’m stupid. I -

C: …

C: Never mind.

(deep inhale, exhale)

C: Sometimes you just like to remember.

C: … 

(end recording click)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is "I'll Be Seeing You" by Billie Holiday. It seemed appropriate.


	21. Broadcast Seventeen - Recorded January 4, 2098

(click of recording start)

CHARLIE (C): Today is January 4th, it’s… what year is it?

UNKNOWN VOICE 1 (UV1): 2098. I thought you said this in all your recordings?

C: Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I remember.

(laughter)

UV1: Right! Well, yeah, it’s 2098 now. Weird, huh?

C: For sure. Today’s January 4th, 2098, and uhh… we’re gonna head into the town. Town!

UV1: (laughs)

C: (laughs) City. This is, um, this is definitely a city.

UV1: One of the larger ones I’ve seen! Probably due to the, um… the old scorched earth areas around here, and the evac stuff. This isn’t a city that got super messed up.

C: Right, right. We know a little bit about St. Louis, about - about the history of St. Louis!

UV1: Mostly because of you, nerd.

C: Hey!

UV1: (laughing) Charlie’s rude and didn’t introduce me to the radio waves. I’m Anguish Arkenmoor, one of Fort Epiphany Outpost’s best hunters!

C: One of our _ only _ hunters.

ANGUISH (AG): Yeah, and that makes me one of the best! Actually, probably _ the _ best.

C: Don’t tell that to Rick.

AG: (laughs) Rick _ knows _ he can’t compete with me. I’ve never lost a duck. Not once. Do you know how many ducks he’s lost?

C: I… can’t begin to know that.

AG: More than one, that’s for sure! But don’t worry. I always get them for him.

C: This seems a little antagonistic…

AG: Hah! As if. Rick, outshoot me, and prove me wrong, buddy.

C: Geez.

AG: I only mostly mean it. He’s better than me with snares any day of the week.

C: O-oh?

AG: Oh yeah. Listen, everybody has their specialty. Mine’s getting animals just right with a crossbow or a shotgun, his is snaring things real clean and quick. Just like Alexandre’s is shooting stuff, and yours is…

AG: ...uh, seeing, I guess?

C: We’ll call it that, yeah.

C: Seeing plus.

AG: (snorts) The plus really makes it. Seeing, but there’s a li’l bit extra in there.

C: (laughs) Right, yeah.

C: Anyway, yeah. So, uh - so this is -

AG: (interrupting) This is it!

C: I - I mean, yes, that’s true. (laughs) We’re heading over the bridge today. The river’s iced, but not enough for us to be, um… for us to be confident about it, I think. So what we’re gonna do is have most folks take a bunch of stuff out of the town, and then the engineers are gonna take the town across a bridge that’s, uh… pretty close to the really big archway.

AG: Oh my _ God _ , the _ archway! _

C: Oh. Right - yeah, haha… I almost forgot that, somehow! There’s, um, there’s a really big sort of metal archway in St. Louis? I’m not - I’m not really sure why that’s there. Maybe… do you think it has some kind of - some kind of religious significance?

AG: Charlie, how the hell should I know?

C: Yeah, good point.

AG: (laughs)

C: Uh - the point is, we’re going to take as much weight out of the town as possible, and then we’re gonna take it across the river and sit it right underneath that um, that archway. I mean, that thing is so big and long and thin, it’s definitely, like… not a place where trolls or beasts would be hiding. There’s no shelter under it.

AG: I heard it’s hollow.

C: It’s _ what?! _

AG: Hollow! You know, it… people can go inside it!

C: (concerned) Do - do we need to re-evaluate our positioning of the town?

AG: Oh, I don’t think so.

C: How’d you know it was hollow?

AG: Oh, I don’t _ know, _ I’ve just _ heard _ that it is. I still don’t know what it’s for though.

C: Huh.

AG: Anyway, I think we’re probably about ready to get moving? I see a couple other folks heading towards the gate.

C: Oh? (rustling cloth) Oh!

AG: Let’s roll.

C: Y-yeah. Right. Yep. Let’s -

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

(crunch of snow underfoot)

CHARLIE (C): So, we’re - wow, it’s cold.

ANGUISH (AG): Yeah! It’s January! What did you expect?

C: (irritated) I expected it to be a little warmer. But it’s not cloudy today.

UNKNOWN VOICE 1 (UV1): Well, _ sorry, _ I decided not to cause _ problems _ in the _ sky _ today.

C: I - I didn’t say th -

AG: Yeah, _ Charlie, _ hasn’t Aysa done enough lately?

C: Hey, I didn’t - I didn’t - 

AYSA (AY): (laugh) Charlie. Relax. We’re not actually ragging on you.

C: ...oh.

C: U-um. right.

AY: It’s fine, hon.

C: Kinda feel dumb now.

(distant shouting)

AG: Oh, there they go!

AY: Is this ice solid?

C: It is.

(distant engine rumble)

AG: Wow, that bridge is _ barely _ wide enough.

C: Yeah… but it was sturdier than any other.

AG: Hanna went and looked at it?

C: Yeah.

AY: (muttering) good enough for me.

C: I mean, I - never mind.

AY: Listen, not that I don’t trust you or anything, but I’m pretty sure Hanna knows more about bridges than you do.

C: No, you’re right. She does. I’m just - never mind. You’re right.

AG: We’ve got to keep an eye on the shore, make sure nothing’s coming up on us. This is kind of a racket, and we don’t have any shielding. No clouds or snow.

AY: If you really think we need it -

C: (interrupting) No. It’s too risky for the treads.

AG: Yeah, they’re right. It’s too dangerous.

AY: Alright. I mean, I can whip up a storm in a few minutes.

C: I know you can. I, um, I think that keeping the town up on the bridge is probably… important, though.

AY: Suit yourself.

AG: Charlie, I would recommend you lead anybody not needed over to the shore.

C: Hm? Oh. Right, yeah. Probably a good idea. Uh, if they shout to you, tell them the town’s a little far to the south side of the bridge. It’s not right in the middle.

AG: Will do.

(crunch of snow underfoot, slightly breathless panting, rustling cloth, all for several minutes)

C: ...oh, damn it, I left the recorder on.

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

CHARLIE (C): Alright. So… everything’s good. We’re in St. Louis. We’re across the river. This - uh, this place really freaks me out.

ANGUISH (AG): No kidding. But don’t worry, you’ve got plenty of hunters and fighters to protect you!

C: (flustered) I don’t - I don’t see what that has to do with, with anyth - with my, um, personal feelings towards the - towards a city that I’m, um -

AG: (laughing) Wow, I didn’t even say their name!

C: (clearly embarrassed) Stop it.

AG: Listen, you’re not the _ only _ one who’s glad Alexandre’s up and about, y’know? Everybody’s glad to have them back. Quick, smart, reliable, determined…

C: I-I’m aware.

AG: Anyway, you were saying?

C: I don’t _ remember! _

AG: I’ll spare you. Hi, world! Anguish here! We’ve made it across the river and we’re in St. Louis now. There’s some discussion about what to do next, but we know - from the size of the streets and stuff - that we need to send a ground party to the radio place to try and make it work. If we’re lucky we’ll be able to find a way to get the town closer, so that we aren’t split up, but who knows! Maybe we won’t do that.

C: (clears throat) R-right. Exactly that.

AG: Now _ Charlie _ here wants to be part of the ground party, which is a bad idea, because they’re not immune -

C: (interrupting her) It doesn’t _ matter _ if I’m not immune! I’ll wear a mask and I have - I have my own defenses.

AG: Right, your, um… your magic instant-kill-rash-monsters power.

C: (sputtering) It’s real! I - people have seen me do it!

AG: Right, at the town. I mean, no offense, Charlie, but like… it’s kind of coincidental that you did it just as Hanna shot it through the skull, you know? Kind of makes it hard to figure out if you, um… actually did anything to it.

C: ...right. Well, you may not believe me, but I know what I can do. And I’m not afraid.

AG: But the thing is, you’re not the one you have to convince here.

C: (clearly irritated, growling tone of voice) I _ know. _

AG: So… you’re gonna have to talk to the other people who are going.

C: I - wait, aren’t you going?

AG: Well, no, I’m letting Rick do that one. He’s better at spotting tracks and stuff? So he’s gonna hang around with you while I stick around here and keep stuff away from the town.

C: Oh. Right. Well, I guess I’ll… go talk to him, then?

AG: That might do it! Be aware though that he, like, doesn’t really believe in your… magic stuff. Like, at all. He just thinks you’re good at handling animals.

C: ...I can see through the eyes of my bird and also through dead things?

AG: I mean, he hasn’t seen you do that, so…

C: For - ! Okay, well… Sure. Sure. Seeing is - seeing is believing, I guess, right? (short laugh)

AG: Something like that.

C: I’m gonna go talk to whoever’s leading this expedition, then.

AG: (snort) Good luck!

(footsteps)

C: ...what’s _ that _ supposed to mean?

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

CHARLIE (C): Uh… hey.

(sound of stone on metal, rhythmic; something being sharpened)

ALEXANDRE (A): Do you need something?

C: I - Rick redirected me to, um, to you. Said you were… he said you were going to be the, uh, the person in charge of the expedition into the city?

A: Yes.

C: (clears throat) I’d like to go with.

A: Okay. Sure.

C: (stunned) ...wait, what?

A: Okay.

C: Y… you’re just gonna let me do that?

A: Yeah.

C: ...oh.

(sharpening continues)

A: Did you expect something else?

C: Uh… yeah, actually. I pretty much thought you would just, uh, just brush me off. Given that I’m, um… not immune, and all that. Sort of thing.

A: …

A: You’re capable. You’ve proven that much. I don’t see why not to have you as part of the team.

C: Oh -

A: (continuing quickly) You’re the one who has the recorder, anyway. The one who wants to do all this. Kind of makes sense you should go.

C: ...I, uh… y-yeah.

A: And you’ll help if we get attacked. You have the bird.

C: Right, my, um… Lady.

A: Mm-hm.

A: So… yes.

C: …

A: I’ll come find you when we’re ready to leave. Get anything you need together. Chances are we’ll spend the night outside the town, so make sure you’re ready for that. Make sure you have enough for… Lady Louise, too.

C: I-I will.

A: Good.

(sharpening stops, rustle of cloth)

A: We’ll be leaving in an hour. Don’t want to lose the daylight.

C: I - sure, yeah, got it.

A: Good.

(pause)

A: We’ll be counting on you to help defend if we’re attacked. I… trust that you will do that.

C: I can.

A: I know.

(pause)

(footsteps, receding)

(pause)

C: ...what the hell just happened?

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

In about… twenty minutes, probably, we’re going to head out. I’m on the ground team that’s out looking for - for the radio station. It’s not a big team. It’s me, Alex, Rick, Marsha, (person, person). That’s it. That’s… everyone. O-obviously Alex and Rick at least are there mostly for, um, for protection, and I’m here to help keep an eye out for danger.

Hanna’s… staying with the town. I think - I don’t think she was happy about that. But, uh, either she or I has to stay, and if I’m going, then she has to be the one who sticks back. And I want to go. I need to go. I need to find this place.

I need to know. I need to understand what it is that I feel like is happening. I - I need to find it and I _ need _ to get the word out to the world.

Also, Alex is being nice to me now? I - I don’t know what that’s about. Maybe they need something from me. They might just be pretending to be nice about my ‘special powers’ or something, I don’t know. Whatever. The - the point is, they’re letting me go with the ground team. That’s what matters.

I feel like there’s something… something I need to find, almost? I don’t know. But this - this’ll give me a chance to figure out what’s going on. I won’t abandon the group, obviously, that would - that would be stupid. But, uh… I’m going to follow this… impulse.

I just feel like I have to.

(distant shout)

Huh? Oh - time to go. Time to move.

There, uh, there are some spare batteries I’ve been saving for… for this particular situation. What that means is I’m going to be able to keep… documenting, I guess, everything that happens. I think it’s important. For that to happen. Whatever I find, I - I don’t want to be the only one who knows about it. I don’t know what we’re going to find but I… I just think I have to be ready.

(footsteps)

(door opens)

ALEXANDRE (A): Charlie?

CHARLIE (C): Right, right, just - grabbing my stuff.

A: Right. We’re leaving.

C: Uh, yeah. Yep. Be right with you.

(door closes)

(nervous sigh)

O-kay. O-_ kay. _ Alright. Let’s go.

(end recording click)


	22. Broadcast Eighteen - Recorded January 4, 2098

(click of recording start)

(crunch of snow underfoot, multiple; no other sound)

CHARLIE (C): (whispering, muffled) We are… in the city streets. We only have a few blocks to go to get to the station, but it’s - it’s terrifying. It’s unbelievably quiet.

UNKNOWN VOICE 1 (UV1): (hushed) Aysa’s keeping everyone and everything blanketed, so that’s why it’s so silent out. Should keep the trolls down if there are any nearby, so we likely won’t have much trouble. The town sure won’t.

C: That…  _ is _ the goal, yeah.

UV1: Hey, I’m just saying. For your recorder.

C: It’s not  _ my _ recorder, it’s just the, uh, the - it’s just  _ a _ recorder.

UV1: You’re the only one that uses it ever! It’s yours. If you’re the only person who uses something, that basically just makes it yours.

C: I mean, that doesn’t really -

ALEXANDRE (A): Shh.

(silence)

A: Charlie.

C: Yep. Give me a second.

(low static)

C: I don’t see anything right nearby. Lady doesn’t, either.

A: Can you check the building ahead?

C: Yeah, uh, of - of course.

(static intensifies)

C: Let me send her in, there’s a broken window above…

(static)

C: ...not seeing anything.

A: Good. Let’s go.

C: Wait.

(silence)

C: There… is, but it’s small. Just one little - one little thing in there.

A: Can you take care of it?

C: (startled) Wh - uh, I mean, I… I think so, though normally I have to be, uh, closer to my - to my target.

A: Do it. That building is our target.

C: Oh!

C: Uh - okay, yeah, sure, give me a second. Lady, um…

(low static)

C: Just a little closer. Not too close. Enough for me to see -

(static intensifies)

C: Oh, there - ew, that thing looks  _ nasty. _

A: Can you get rid of it?

C: Yeah, it’s small.

(static chip, static ends)

(brief pause)

C: (mildly out of breath) It’s dead.

A: Good work.

C: O-oh…! Th… thank you.

A: Alright. Go in the ground floor and search for the station.

C: I - I don’t know where in the building it is. It might be further up.

A: The further up it is, the less chance it is to be intact.

C: Yeah, I know, I’m worried about that…

A: Hopefully it won’t be a problem.

(various movement; multiple people)

(silence aside from movement and breathing)

C: It looks clear. It’s too open down here for - to be a good home for beasts.

A: That’s what I like to hear.

(silence aside from movement and breathing, crunch of snow and glass underfoot, faintly)

C: We’re inside the building now. We, uh, we - it’s really dark in here. But we’re not sure about using torches right now. We don’t want to attract anything. I - I don’t sense anything. But I’m not infallible. We won’t be taking any, um, any - any unnecessary risks.

A: (to others) Spread out, check and clear.

C: Should I -

A: No. Stay near me.

C: Right. Right. Yeah.

(distant movement in an enclosed space)

C: I’m gonna turn this off for now.

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

C: We’re five floors up and I think we’ve found it. I mean, I don’t know if - I don’t know if this was originally what was here, but it’s - we found a, uh…

(trailing off)

A: It’s some kind of setup.

C: It’s a - it’s a lot of, um… a lot of equipment. Which I don’t know how to use. But Marsha will.

A: Right. We clear the area, clear the route, get her here, get your broadcast thing set up.

C: Right, exactly. So we just -

(distant crack)

(silence)

A: What was that.

C: I don’t - I don’t know?

A: Sounded like a gunshot. Rifle.

C: I - shit. The town.

A: Check the windows, everyone. Now!

C: Lady Louise, go to the - yeah, that way. To the town.

(sound of wings)

(muffled voices)

A: What do you see?

C: Give me a second.

(pause, strained breathing)

C: ...I see the Outpost.

A: And?

C: I said  _ give me a second. _

(silence)

C: Shit. I saw a gun fire. I - there are things out there. There’s things around the town. That’s Hanna’s gun, I think. I’m pretty sure.

A: Damn it. Damn it. We shouldn’t have left.

C: We shouldn’t have come here.

A: Shut up. We shouldn’t have left the town so unguarded. We have to send some back to defend it.

C: We need to get moving, then?

A: No. You’re staying here. Too dangerous for you out there.

C: Wh - but I can -

A: Don’t argue with me. You’re too valuable to lose.

C: (taken aback) Uh - I - okay. Uh… sure.

A: The rest of you, go. Get back there. Stay silent, go fast. Let the Hawk’s wings carry you. Once the town is safe, get Marsha and bring her here.

UNKNOWN VOICE 2: Right. Gotcha. We’ll be back soon.

A: Good.

(movement, multiple people departing)

C: Why am I staying here? It’s dangerous here too! I - I can be useful back at the town!

A: We’re staying here because it’s too dangerous for you to travel if there’s beasts and trolls on the move.

C: It’s not - we?

A: I’m staying with you. You’re too vulnerable on your own.

C: (irritated) I’m not -

A: (interrupting) You’re my responsibility. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.

C: ...fine.

C: But I’m using Lady to help, and you can’t stop me.

A: That’s fine. I’ll keep an eye out here.

(howl of wind)

C: Aysa…

A: She’ll help them.

C: It’ll be hard to get here.

A: That doesn’t matter. All they need to do is bunker down safely.

C: And us?

A: We stay here until the coast is clear. Then the others bring Marsha and we do…

A: …

A: Whatever it is you’re going to do with your radio.

C: It’s not my radio -

A: (interrupting) The radio, then. You do it. Then…

(silence)

(silence)

C: I don’t know either.

A: For now we stay silent.

C: I’m going to help.

A: ...good luck.

(end recording click)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's been so long since an update. As you can imagine things are Wild(TM) right now. But the semester's over at least, so I can focus more on writing.
> 
> We're very close to the end. Maybe a chapter or two away after this one. We'll see.


	23. Broadcast Nineteen - Recorded January 4, 2098

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi everyone! I hope you like characters interacting because that's what you're going to get a lot of in the end of the story here. i mean, this chapter isn't The End. But we're in the home stretch.
> 
> this is also where I begin to, as I like to say, play fast and loose with accepted canon, because I don't know what a kade does and I'm willing to be it's different in America anyway. They're called turncoats over here and they are responsible for a lot of damage and death. also people became them on purpose because the illness was a cleansing whatever whatever and it was the will of their god or some such nonsense.  
the point is, I am now going to mess around with matters we don't fully understand in regards to the SSSS canon and I hope you don't mind. Hiyah. let's go
> 
> Oh also charlie swears a LOT in this chapter but, like, that's kind of what happens when you get caught in the situation they're in, so I left it in.

(click of recording start)

CHARLIE (C): ...Alexandre. Um - 

ALEXANDRE (A): You can call me Alex. It’s fine.

C: O-oh.

C: Why are you - why not just take everybody back to the Outpost all at once? Why keep me here and, and then… stay?

A: It’s too dangerous if there’s beasts on the move. Even in a small group you wouldn’t be safe. You are my responsibility to protect and I will not endanger you. Especially not if beasts are getting smarter.

C: If -  _ what?! _

A: They’re getting smarter. They’ll target you.

C: I’m sorry?!

A: The ones I had to shoot. They were human once. Hiding inside an animal’s body. That’s too smart for a beast or a troll. Too prepared. Those aren’t right.

C: None of this is right.

A: They’re not normal, then. That’s not what they should do. How they should act.

C: I… I knew that wasn’t normal, I knew that wasn’t - but Hanna didn’t bring it up again, so… fuck! I  _ knew… _

A: I know. You’re smarter than she gives you credit for. Than I did.

C: ...thanks.

A: They can tell you’re not immune. I know they can.

C: How? I mean, how do you - how do you know?

A: When you’re around, it’s more important to kill them. The Hawk knows.

C: (softly) Oh.

A: The Hawk shows me what to kill first. Shows me my priorities. Guides my hands with her wings and sight. The beasts near you are always the most important to destroy, because you’re not immune. I can see what they will attack, and when you appear, they shift to you. They hunt you down now. The hiding-beasts wanted me to leave the walls so they could get rid of me. They know who I am. They know who you are.

C: But… they don’t communicate, they don’t have - they don’t have a  _ society _ or anything. How could they…?

A: I don’t know.

A: Do you?

C: I… let me think.

C: I guess they could have adapted? I mean… could be adapting. Rather. Um.

A: Meaning?

C: Meaning they, uh, their prey is getting harder to catch, so they’re changing. This could be a natural trend. An ordinary adaptation to a change in environment. But I would have assumed this would happen - I don’t know, ages ago. And I would assume someone would have noticed before now. We can’t be the only town that’s encountered the hiding-beasts, unless they just… really are that new. But I - I find that hard to believe.

A: Charlie.

C: Y-yeah?

A: …

A: Do you think they came for us because of the radio.

C: …

C: Because - you mean because of the town’s radio? Or KMOX?

A: Either. Both.

C: I… how could they  _ possibly _ know about that?

A: I don’t know. Maybe it’s a bad theory. I don’t know things about nature.

C: I - no, I mean, it’s, it’s something we should - it’s something we should take into account. We, I, I don’t know if beasts can - uh, if they can detect radio signals. I don’t - I don’t see how they would. But Hanna says she can sense them sometimes, so what if it’s somehow… like that? Maybe you’re right. Maybe they followed us here and they don’t want us, um… using the radio, I guess. I - I don’t know!

A: Hm.

C: …

C: Why did we come here? Why did we do this?

C: Why did everybody just go along with what I said when I said it? Why did anybody listen to me? What the hell were they all thinking?  _ Why did we come here? _

A: Because it was a good idea.

C: That’s not true and you know it. Heading straight into a population center like this is practically a suicide mission.

A: You want my honest opinion?

C: Yes.

A: Because we needed something to do.

C: That… I mean, I guess we’re bored. Not much to do in the apocalypse.

A: No. Not like that.

A: We needed something to do with our lives. A purpose. Something to aim for. Something to reach towards.

A: Have you ever had your soul die?

C: Uhh… I, um… I mean, I’ve sort of had my body die but I can’t really - I can’t speak for the state of my soul.

(Charlie laughs nervously)

A: That’s what happens when you don’t have a purpose. You die inside. There’s no point in living if you don’t have something to live for. Then it’s just surviving and you’re no better than the beasts and trolls.

A: You need something to live for. Everybody does. Everyone. When you don’t have it…

C: ...you die?

A: It doesn’t matter if you die. That’s what happens. Nothing matters if you don’t have a purpose. You have nothing to try for. You don’t know that feeling. You always have things to reach for.

C: What? Me?

A: Yes. The big salamanders. The mice and birds.

C: The - my wildlife studies.

A: Who do they benefit? No one. But you do them anyways. Why?

C: Because… I feel like it’s worth something. To - to someone, somewhere.

A: You?

C: I don’t know. Maybe.

A: You want to collect the knowledge and keep it safe. You want to spread knowledge, for others to hear and know. That’s your purpose.

C: I… you make it sound so, uh… so noble. Dramatic.

A: That’s what it is.

C: I’m just measuring snot otters.

A: You undersell yourself.

(moment of silence)

A: When you learned about the radio tower. And you said we should go there. A lot of people didn’t have a fire burning in them, but they do now.

C: I - I mean, that was hardly me. It was all Marsha knowing about things. I didn’t, it wasn’t even me that found the sig…

C: …

C: Alex, the signal.

A: Signal?

C: The - we learned about the tower, uh, no, this station, this building, we learned about it because we picked up a signal. From the station. From  _ this _ station. Marsha knew which one it was because it was so distinctive, because it, it, because it used the - the callsign, the sign. KMOX. Because it said KMOX.

A: Yes…?

C: Alex,  _ who sent that signal? _

C: There’s nobody here.

(silence aside from the sound of wind)

(speaking simultaneously)

A: The beasts, the hiding-

C: It’s proximity to the -

(moment of silence)

A: This is a trap.

C: We need to warn the Outpost. Uh, right now. Immediately.

A: It must be bait.

C: And we fell for it. Like - like fish for a lure. Oh, by the Dove’s wings. We - shit. Shit. I - how?! How do we -

A: The radio. Use the radio.

C: I don’t know how to work this!

A: Well, figure it out!

(scrambling movement)

C: Shit, shit, shit. But we know if it was - if it was from this radio station, at least, um… at least we know it works. So it should be, I, uh, it should be easy to make it work the way I want it to. Right? Oh, Dove’s light. Oh Dove.

A: I’ll watch out. If they used this as bait there must be something around that operated it.

C: If they even - Do you think a beast… no, it has to be, a… what did Hanna call those -

A: Radio.

C: Right. Sorry.

(scrambling, movement, the click of switches)

C: It’s in working condition. But, uh, it’s not - oh, no, there we go. Power. How does this have power?! It’s been so long… never mind. Never mind. I’m just glad it does.

C: I’m working on this but I have to - Hanna said once there was, uh, there was a story she heard about - about a mage, like her, who had, um… become infected. By looking into the eyes of a troll for too long, or something. I don’t know. But they could - they could still do things like people could, right? They could walk and talk and they weren’t deformed or anything. At least, uh, not at first. She - I can’t remember what she called it. A fade, or something. Kade, maybe? Same thing as turncoats, y’know, powered people who, who spread the illness on purpose in service of whatever they thought it was and, and, uh, des- uhh, infected whole towns, whole cities.

A: Focus.

C: If one of those is here, everyone is in danger, because it can get into your head if you’re immune and kill you anyway.

A: Put your mask on.

C: Is something nearby?

A: No. Not yet.

C: ...okay.

(moment of silence)

(static noise)

C: Got it. I think. I’ll try to raise the Outpost. Uh, Outpost. This is Charlie, um, up at - over at KMOX. Up and over at? I don’t know. Outpost? Marsha? Anybody?

(pause)

(heavy static roar)

C: Ow, crap!

(rapidly shifting static)

A: Shh!

C: (hissing) I can’t control this!

C: Lady Louise found the Outpost but can’t get close due to the wind. It’s distracting me.

C: Come on…

(static dies down)

C: Okay. Let’s try that again. Outpost, this is Charlie, up in the radio station. Can you hear me? Do you - do you copy?

(silence)

C: Marsha? Oakley? We - we’re not, uh, sure, but we think this is a trap. Can you hear us? Are you out there?

A: What does your bird see?

C: Nothing, right now! It’s all wind and snow.

A: Then Aysa must be alive still.

C: Well, that’s good. Um, good news. That’s a good indicator.

A: Keep trying.

C: Outpost -

UNKNOWN VOICE 1: KMOX station.

C: Oh, Dove’s down!

UV1: KMOX station.

C: Yes, that’s - that’s us. We’re here. Hello, this is KMOX. This is Charlie. Who - uh, who is this?

UV: KMOX station.

C: That’s me, yeah. I mean, I guess. Which one of you is this? Guys? Marsha? Desiree?

UV: Hello, this is KMOX. This is Charlie.

C: …

C: What the fuck.

A: I do not like this.

C: You, uh, you can say that again.

C: Identify yourself!

UV1: Identify yourself!

C: I - Alex? Does that - does that sound like… like me?

A: …

C: …

C: Maybe I shouldn’t talk to it anymore.

UV1: Hello, this is KMOX. This is Charlie. Who is this? Identify yourself!

UV1: Thank you very much. Goodbye.

(harsh static, loud electrical sound)

(sharp cry, sudden movement)

A: Charlie!

(rustling cloth)

C: (choked) I’m fine, I’m fine, it just sparked unexpectedly, I’m - Alex, that was my voice. It copied my, my voice. Something copied my voice, shit, I, uh, I, Alex.  _ Something copied my voice! _

A: Shh. Calm down. We need to think about it.

C: What is there to think about? It  _ stole my voice! _

A: Charlie. Calm down. Look at me.

(silence)

C: … I… Sorry. Sorry.

A: It’s fine. What do we do. You’re the one who knows anything about radios.

C: I… let me, let me think.

(uneven breathing)

C: I - okay. There’s something else that can access the radio somehow and it copied my voice, which means it needs it for something. Which means that something wants my voice to talk to someone and that’s probably the Outpost, because, uh, nobody - nobody else knows my voice. So it’s - it must not be able to, to, to, uh, to get into the Outpost. Right? If it could get in, w-whatever it is, it wouldn’t need to mimic me.

A: Okay.

C: So, uh, so… so the Outpost must be okay. Holding. Okay. Good. Uh, we also - it doesn’t have your voice. I don’t think. And Lady’s out there near the Outpost so I might, uh, I might be able to use her to… somehow communicate?

A: Okay.

C: Alex, I’m - I’m really freaked out right now. I’m really scared.

A: It’ll be fine. This is new but it will be fine. We will figure out what is happening and best it.

C: Right. Yeah. Right. Sure.

A: We will.

C: Right. Um. Thanks.

(moment of silence)

(static)

C: The - it’s still working? Maybe I can raise the Outpost -

A: The thing will not let you through.

C: Well… no, you’re probably right. But if we can at least listen, maybe we can - I mean, more information is always better.

A: Correct.

C: So we… yes. Uh, y-you can let go. It’s, I’m fine.

A: Are you sure.

C: Yeah, I’m - I’m okay. Time to - time to figure things out. Problem solving mode.

UV1: Outpost? This is Charlie.

C: I hate this so much.

UV1: Outpost, this is Charlie.

UV2: Charlie? You made it into the tower?

UV1: Yes, I did. The radio station still works.

C: (whispering) I hate this. I hate this. I hate this.

UV2: We’re stuck here, Charlie. Aysa’s keeping us safe but there’s some beasts on the prowl out there.

C: That’s Desiree, isn’t it? I think that’s Desiree.

UV1: The station is clear. Safe to come in.

DESIREE (D): Thank the gods. We thought we’d have to clear the entire place out. Well, when the storm - Aysa brought it, but it’ll last as long as it wants to. When it’s clear, we’ll see about heading your way, maybe. There’s a few too many beasts around here for us to be comfortable, though I don’t think they really super know we’re here. 

C: (whispering) It’s lying to them. It’s luring them in. I - the building is clear, but, but the… around it won’t be.

A: No. We only searched this. We were small and quiet.

UV1: The streets are surprisingly empty. There’s not a lot of danger here.

D: Aw, good to hear! Well, sit tight. We gotta wait out the storm. Say, is your group with you?

UV1: No, I sent them back to help defend the Outpost when we heard it was being attacked. Did they arrive safely?

D: Yeah, all but Anguish. She’s still out in the storm somewhere. Hopin’ she’s alright.

UV1: Be careful. If you send someone to look for her, send the mage. The city isn’t crowded with trolls, but it’s still dangerous.

D: Yeah. Yeah, I know. 

UV1: Well, I’m stuck here until the storm’s over. Let me know when it is, okay?

D: Will do, Charlie. Stay safe.

UV1: You too.

(silence, sound of wind outside)

(quick breathing)

C: (quietly) It wants Hanna.

A: ‘The mage.’ They have to know it isn’t you.

C: I… yeah, I wouldn’t - I wouldn’t call her that. They have to be - they have to be suspicious, at least, right?

A: One hopes.

C: Yeah. Yeah.

A: Whatever it is, it is evil.

C: I think it’s that… mage thing that Hanna told me about. What do we… do?

A: It poses a danger to the Outpost, yes?

C: I - you could say that, yeah.

A: We have to eliminate it.

C: Are you -

C: ...

C: Are you  _ insane? _

A: I am driven.

C: We’re going to get killed.

A: And we will get killed if we do nothing.

C: Uh… I, I mean. Uh - n - screw it, I’m with you.

C: A-and don’t you even think about leaving me behind. This is a magic thing. I know you have magic too but I, I, I’m not - I’m not letting you go on your own. And I’m  _ not _ staying here on  _ my _ own. You need - you need someone with you, to, to help you with this, to help detect, um - to help you -

A: Charlie. I’m not asking you to stay behind. I wasn’t going to.

C: ...oh.

A: I told you. I trust you.

C: Right. Right.

A: So where will it be.

C: I - I don’t - … well, let me think. Let me think. It, um… it has to be close enough to have used the radio to send out a signal. And close enough for the Outpost to contact them. Uh, given the - given the range of KMOX, it’s, it could be anywhere… but it has to have sent out the signal from its source. So it has to be hanging around.

A: If this is a trap, one that it has used before, then it’s going to have a nest nearby. These are its hunting grounds.

C: Eugh. Yeah. You’re right.

A: Do you think it’s in this building?

C: That would be… if it’s - it’s not overpowering the signal. It’s not pirating it. It’s hijacking the same station, not broadcasting its own signal. That was just, uh, another voice on the same - like someone in the same room as us. It’s - uhh, the point is, that was the same signal. That was KMOX. So it has to be, has to be close enough to, to, to do that without anybody noticing. So it’s - uhh, it’s probably in this building. Or one of the nearby ones.

A: We searched the lower floors. It must be higher up.

C: I - yeah, I guess so.

(brief pause, sound of wind outside)

A: We will kill it.

C: Dove’s mercy. I mean, yeah, I guess so. I need Lady Louise back.

A: Be swift about calling her. We have no time to waste.

C: Yeah. I’ll be quick. Then let’s get ready to go.


	24. Broadcast Twenty - Recorded January 4, 2098

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, I'm having some fun with established canon. enjoy

(howl of wind outside)

(flutter of wings)

CHARLIE (C): (relieved) There you are! Come on. We need you.

(soft hiss)

C: I know, I know. I love you too, you big bumbling mess of feathers.

ALEXANDRE (A): (indistinct muttering)

C: Huh?

A: Nothing. Are you ready?

C: Yeah. Lady Louise is here to help. Uh, won’t be much - she won’t be as, um, as useful as she could be in a building, but, uh - wait, maybe she could scout above.

A: In the storm?

C: There’s a chance.

(sound of wings)

(pause, howl of wind)

C: Keep eyes around, I’m looking through hers.

A: Understood.

(crunch of footsteps on glass, debris)

A: Tell me about this monster.

C: The - the turncoat?

A: If that’s what it’s called. What is it. What can it do.

C: Well - I, I mean… so, I’m extrapolating that the thing Hanna told me about and turncoats are the same thing. If I put the lore together, it, uh, it’s… well, it’s a mage that contracted the rash illness, and instead of just dying, they, uh… they became a beast. But not in the normal way. In a really messed-up way. They still have their power, and they still have their awareness, they just… use it to spread the rash illness instead of anything else. They use it to hurt and kill as many other people as they possibly can. It’s… it’s bad.

A: Hmm.

C: They’re called turncoats ‘cause they were, uh, they were - well, during the… okay, so, turncoat is a really old American term for a traitor. For someone who turns to the enemy’s side and works for them instead. I don’t - I don’t really know why it’s that term exactly. But I know what it means. So, uh, when the rash illness came to America, they were people who uh… who deliberately brought the infection into the cities. They were mages, but they, they, they… they worked for the illness. For - for lack of a better, um… term, I guess.

A: Most mages are immune.

C: But not all. And, uh, not back - not back when the rash illness was first appearing. People who can work with magic nowadays are more immune than not because, uh, well… all the non-immune ones died.

A: Right.

C: So, uh, yeah. Turncoats hid dead beasts in clothing and bags and fled into safe cities, and then spread the illness as much as they could during its incubation period. Then they usually turned into beasts, really smart ones.

A: Disgusting.

C: Yeah, no kidding. The thing about a turncoat mage is, uh… not just the servants, I mean; I mean the actual mage itself -

A: Wait. There’s more than one type?

C: No. Well, yes. Well - this is difficult to explain, I’ve - I’ve only heard it secondhand -

A: It’s fine. Go on.

C: There are mages and people who do the bidding of the actual thing itself. Hanna called it a kade. Then there is the kade. It, uh… it kind of masterminds the others, sort of? In a way. It controls them. And it passes through their, through eye contact. So, uh, if you see anything up here… don’t look at it. Don’t look at its eyes.

A: How am I supposed to shoot it if I can’t look at it.

C: Yeah, that’s… gonna be a problem. Just, whatever you do, don’t meet its eyes. It’ll probably try and get you to do that, like… it’ll talk to you. But don’t listen to it.

A: Talk?

C: Yeah. They, uh… they’re still - they can speak and stuff. They have full voices. I… think? I’ve heard they can speak.

A: We don’t know enough about this enemy.

C: See, that’s what I was saying, I don’t think going after it is a good idea! I think we should go back and find Hanna and -

A: (interrupting) But if we don’t kill it, it will kill them first.

C: ...Alex, we - I don’t know if we can do this on our own.

A: We have to.

C: Why? Why can’t we get the others?

A: Because they’re being besieged. 

C: What?

A: The Hawk is telling me to return to the Outpost. The fight is there. The enemy is there. They are having a battle.

C: _ What?! _

A: But this thing is the mastermind.

C: ...oh, Dove’s mercy, it spreads through eyes. If they look any of the -

A: Yes.

C: We have to find it. Oh no. Oh, gods around and above and below and everything, we are - no, no, no, no…

(footsteps quicken)

A: Stairwell here. Do you sense anything?

C: No. Nothing.

A: Good.

(heavy clunk of a metal door handle, creak of door opening)

(footsteps in an echoing enclosed space, breathing)

A: It doesn’t go up too far. Looks like only a few flights and then it’s sealed. No. Collapsed.

C: Be careful.

A: I know.

(footsteps)

C: This is the end of the stairs.

A: Door here. Is there anything beyond it?

(light static)

C: No. Wait. Maybe? No… I can’t tell. I’m… I’m not sure.

A: That’s enough warning for me.

C: Yeah, I… I suppose it is.

A: I’ll go first.

C: There’s nothing behind us. That’s… that’s safer.

A: Right.

(metal creak)

A: (whispering) Light ahead, center of the building.

C: (whispering) Don’t like that.

A: (whispering) Neither do I.

(quiet steps, shuffling and click of door closing softly)

(one set of footsteps stops)

C: (whispering) Alex. Something’s here.

A: What is it.

C: I… I can’t tell? It’s - I’m having trouble seeing…

A: Watch your eyes.

C: I know, I know, I just -

(abrupt silence)

A: What is it. What do you see.

C: I mean, it’s right there. You should be able to see it too.

A: ...oh.

(silence)

C: F...

(throat clearing)

C: (hoarse whisper) For the record, what we’re seeing is, uhh…. i-is… uh….

A: (matching volume) This is a lair.

C: (hoarse whisper) The ceiling is caved in here, and the floor above that, up levels and levels until it forms a cavern inside this building. There’s not very much light coming in, um, as it, uh, it, it, there are only a few - a few little holes to the outside. N-not enough for the snow to get in really. I, uhh, I can see forms that were, uh - were probably animals. I-I can see -

A: (interrupting) Shh.

(silence)

A: Movement.

C: Where?

(silence)

CHARLIE’S VOICE: _ Hello. Charlie. This. _

(softest cry from Charlie)

VOICE THIEF (CHARLIE) (VT(C)): _ KMOX. My voice! Here. _

C: (whispering) Alex…

VT(C): _ Mine. Not. Enough. _

C: (whispering) It’s trying to say something. I don’t see it. Where is it?!

VOICE THIEF (ALEXANDRE): _ Hunting grounds. Best. Trap. _

(A): (quietly) That’s my voice.

C: It knows yours too?

A: Seems so.

VT(C): _ I. Use. Communicate. _

VT(A): _ Operate. Trap. _

VT(C): (broken words cobbled together from other sounds) _ Fools. _

A: Charlie. There.

VT(A): (mocking) _ Charlie! Charlie! Charlie! _

C: Where?

A: Movement. Up there.

(cloth rustling)

A: See it?

C: One second. Let me look from around the... 

C: Uhh, Alex?

C: The entire room is covered in corpses.

A: What?

C: (hissing) Look.

(moment of silence, distant wind and snow)

A: Oh. It is.

C: There’s bodies pinned up all over the walls. Stuffed in the cracks -

VT(A): _ Best. Kill. Show. In. Nest. _

C: Where _ is it?? _

A: I don’t know. I don’t see it.

C: I’ll look through the corpses.

A: Be careful. Don’t look into its eyes.

C: I know. I’ll try.

(light static)

(silence)

C: I - I think I see it.

VT(A): _ Eliminate. Kill. You. _

C: Aah! There! _ Alex! _

(gunshot)

A: Get down!

(heavy impact)

VT(C): _ Communicate. Hunt. Trap. _

VT(C): _ Time to. _

VT(A): _ Hunt. You. _

C: Oh, Dove’s down. Alex, there - it’s on the, the, don’t look!

A: Where is it?

C: Down, on the ground!

(running footsteps)

(gunshot)

C: Turn around!

A: It’s too fast.

C: Down, get down, it’s over -

A: Ah!

(gunshot)

C: How many shots do you have?

A: Enough.

(scuttling sound)

C: It’s trying to look me in the eyes. My eyes are closed. It’s trying to follow me.

C: I’m jumping from corpse to corpse to keep out of its gaze and it’s having trouble follow me. Lady, stay out of the way, I don’t want you getting hurt.

(hissing)

C: _ Aaah! _

A: Charlie!

(gunshot, inhuman scream)

(sound of cloth on pavement, scrambling)

C: Can’t see it, can’t see it, can’t see it -

A: Where is it?

C: I don’t know, I can’t see it!

A: It’s coming for you.

(running footsteps)

A: (closer) Do you see it?

C: No. I can’t feel it in all the bodies.

A: Camouflaged. To the middle, now.

C: What? Why?

A: Better maneuverability.

C: But -

A: Lady can fly in the middle of the room. Go.

(shuffling cloth, movement, sound of wings)

VT(C): _Still. Here._ _Look. For. Me. Look. At. Me._

C: Damn it, damn it, Dove’s mercy…

A: (unintelligible)

C: That doesn’t _ matter! _ Not if we die!

A: Shh.

(silence)

C: _ Dove guide me… _

VT (either): something about the gods but refusing to use their names. Mocking maybe

C: _ Vulture guide me… _

VT (either): sharp change in attitude, anger and fear more than mockery

C: Y-you don’t like that?

(silence)

C: (softly) Vulture of the endless plains, guide me to the world I live in beyond this moment in time. G - uh, uh, patron of the, of the wastes, of death -

A: (softly) Hawk of the grasses…

VT(A): (furious hissing) _ Die. Kill. You. Hunt you down now. Know who you are. _

(sound of wings and angry hissing)

C: Lady Louise -!

A: Let her. Focus.

C: R-right.

C: (stammering) Vulture, patron of death, she who, who may reach out a-and pluck the warmth from a body or the - hhh - the spark from a soul, aid me now…

A: (whispering) Where are you…

C: Vulture, goddess of what has been and what will be. Lord of the threshold between two worlds. Purveyor of spirits and she who holds the list of the names of the dead.

A: Show yourself…

(silence, soft murmuring)

(screech, hissing)

A: The bird -

(flap of wings, scuttling)

A: Dodge!

(gunshot, inhuman scream, flapping wings)

A: It’s coming for us.

C: She who holds the -

VT(C): (angrily) _ I can’t. See. Your. Eyes. But I can. See. Your. Body. _

A: Get down, get out of the way!

(rustling cloth, impact on the floor)

C: Ow!

(gunshot, furious scream)

A: Oh that didn’t stop you this -

(wet scraping sound)

C: ALEX!

(gunshot)

C: Alex! _ Alex! _

A: Get away…

C: Alex -

(hissing)

C: Lady Louise, help, Vulture, help me, please - _ get off them, you freak! _

A: Stay away, you’re not immune, you’re not -

(wet noise, like a blade in flesh)

C: _ ALEX! _

(bird screeching, hissing, clatter of rifle falling to the ground)

C: (voice shaking, shouting) Vulture, give me your strength! Now!

(rising loud static)

(hissing)

(static)

C: (calmly) What is dead must stay dead. What lives will live on. What cannot decide must choose a side, and what dies will be gone.

(coughing)

A: Charlie?

C: What is dead must stay dead. What lives will live on. What cannot decide must choose a side, and what dies will be gone.

C: (clearer) What is dead must stay dead. What lives will live on. What cannot decide must choose a side, and what dies will be gone.

C: _ You’re nothing to me. _

A: Its eyes, don’t -

(wet popping sound (multiple), high-pitched screaming)

C: (calmly) What eyes?

C: _ Sad little thing you are. Old, ruined, and now blind. You’ve done enough here. You’ve overstayed your time. _

A: Stay back…

C: _ Don’t worry about them. They’ll be fine. Worry about yourself. Try to stop the bleeding, Alex. You’ll have to hold on until the others get here, and I wouldn’t want you dying before the rest of your friends have a chance to save you. _

C: _ I will deal with the area. I have been called, and I will help. But first, before that. _

(static rises)

C: _ Turn your face to me, forgotten traitor. _

(high-pitched keening)

C: _ Your time is up. _

(static chip breaking upper audio limits)

(inhuman scream, abruptly cut off)

C: Good riddance.

(flop of multiple bodies to the ground)

(silence, sound of wings, silence)

A: Charlie?

C: (harsh breathing)

A: Charlie…

C: (harsh breathing) I-I’m fine. I’m fine. You’re hurt. You’re - oh, gods, you’re bleeding a lot -

A: I’m -

C: Shut up. I need to call the outpost.

A: What about any other…

C: I’ll be fine. I can handle it.

A: You can’t kill infinite trolls.

C: For you I can.

(soft static)

C: Nothing around. Can you hold on?

A: Yes.

C: I’ll be back. As soon as I can. I’m calling the Outpost and then I’ll be back. I’m leaving Louise with you, okay? Shout if something comes near.

A: (inaudible)

C: I - okay, one second. Let me just…

(soft, fuzzy static)

C: Dove who spreads her wings over the world and heals us all, be with me now. Be with Alex.

(static fades)

C: Alex? Are you - are you there?

A: ...for now.

C: I’ll be right back. Lady, stay. I’ll be fast. I promise.

(fabric moving)

(footsteps hurrying away)

(silence)

A: They do not need me to protect them now. Too strong, too powerful.

A: But I will anyway.

(silence)

(end recording click)

* * *

(click of recording start)

(babble of voices in the background)

(footsteps coming closer, scraping sound)

CHARLIE (C): Hey, it’s my recorder. Wow. This thing didn’t even get damaged. I’m impressed, honestly.

DESIREE (D): It survived? Nice!

C: Yeah.

HANNA (H): Lucky.

C: Yeah, I can get all the recordings off of it. That’s good.

C: (thoughtfully) I wonder if I should broadcast all of them? One by one?

D: I’m sure we can get that to work. Marsha will know if we can’t figure it out.

C: Yeah. Yeah, I think I’d like that.

D: Once we make sure these few blocks are clear. Then we can get settled in, build some defenses.

C: You really think we - no. We can talk about that later. I can’t believe this thing still works! I’ve gotta go let Alex know.

D: (laughing) You do that.

C: I will.

(end recording click)


	25. Broadcast Twenty-one - Broadcast Live January 12, 2098

(brief silence; distant voices)

Right. Here we go.

My name is Charlie McAvoy. A few months ago, my moving town, the Fort Epiphany Outpost, picked up a signal coming from an old radio station in St. Louis - KMOX, a radio from the Old World. We started to head towards the signal, in the hopes that we might be able to find either the person sending the signal or the radio itself, which we could use to find other living people beyond the borders of the country.

We found that radio station. We found KMOX. We’d been lured here by an infected monster, a kade, but myself and my partner Alex took care of it. And now, we have the station under our control.

Marsha Songbird and the other radio assistants, uh, fixed the station up and made it a little more operable. The monstrosity that lived here had been luring people in with KMOX signals and infecting them or eating them, whichever it liked most. It could mimic voices. It could play people against each other. But it won’t anymore.

As you’ve probably heard from the broadcasts so far, we succeeded in reaching the station and killing the monster with the aid of an entity called the Vulture. It’s been a few days since that happened - uhh, I think it’s January… twelfth? Right? Yes. Twelfth. I turned KMOX over to Marsha, but she said after all these broadcasts telling the, uh…. The story, that it’s only fair I get to make this one too.

So here I am. It’s - this is the first real broadcast from KMOX. We’ve found that the station is high-powered enough that the signal can probably reach other countries. Into Canada, maybe even across the ocean to Europe. Maybe someday it’ll find a receiver there. Maybe it is, and that’s you, hearing this now. Maybe you can hear me and you’re going to respond as soon as you hear my voice stop, as soon as this broadcast is over.

I’d like that.

When I - when I started this, I thought that my country was the only one left, and that didn’t mean much, given, uh, given what this place is like. I thought there was nobody outside of America, that the world had fallen. I didn’t know what else to think! We couldn’t talk to anybody. We couldn’t find any signals, any hints of life beyond the walls and the oceans and the radiation bands and the scorch zones. But now I have a way to search for you.

I don’t know if the Outpost will move on. They might. But I know that I’m going to stay here if they go. Sure, I could - I could stay with them. I could go across the countryside with the Outpost and… do whatever. But I… not yet. I think it’s more important now for me to stay where I am, to wait and see if you can talk to me.

Alex is staying here to guard me. The Outpost radio operators are going to be here for a little bit, and I don’t know if they’ll move when the Outpost does again. If it does. Hell, we might all just… be staying here, now. St. Louis is big, but it’s empty. It was one of the half-evac’d cities once the rash illness made it over the river. There weren’t a lot of people left to be… transformed.

So there wasn’t a whole lot to deal with in this city aside from the monstrosity in the radio tower. And now that that’s gone, uh… well, the Vulture took care of a few block radius of this place. So we’re okay for now.

I’ve already managed to contact the Last Library. KMOX is, uh, it’s designed to be used to only broadcast on one frequency, but Marsha and the others figured out we can just…. You know, play with it a little bit and get on others as well. We can contact a  _ lot _ of people if we’re thorough and patient. The Library knows we’re here now, and can regularly communicate with us. I know the Outpost’s codes, and I might be able to get some of the radio frequencies for the other towns that still exist out there. Like Waygate! I might be able to broadcast all the way to Waygate! Uh, Wolf, if you’re hearing this, turns out it, uhhh…. I have Lady because of a god, not because I can just see through animals and control them like my dad could. Different thing. But your lessons really helped me get used to her. So, thanks.

I... don’t think Waygate, uh… I don’t know if they can send anything back to the station, to be honest. I don’t think they can. KMOX’s range depends on its power, and the towns don’t have the strength this station does.

It’s in really good working order, by the way. The, um, the… the turncoat, it kept it working so that it could use it as a trap. Well, now it’s ours, and the engineers can keep it up and running. They already said it’s more alive than any other radio they’ve worked on. They can keep it functioning. It’s run by a big generator in the basement and a bunch of solar panels strung all around the tower. A lot of them were covered in snow, but we’ve cleaned them off, so the broadcast should be a lot stronger now.

I’m - I’m rambling. Uh, I should wrap this up. So that I can set it to loop and go and find something to eat with Alex.

Okay. Okay. Baseline is, the thing I want to say, is: we’re here. We’re here to stay. And we’re here to listen.

I’m a wildlife biologist. I - I’m not an expert on people, in any way. But I think that if we can talk to each other - if we can communicate - we can try to reconnect our world.

It’s been almost a century since the rash illness swept over this planet. We’re different than we used to be, in the Old World. Whatever happened -  _ whyever _ that happened - we’ll do better this time. We can rebuild this world, I just know it. I know it! We can’t give up on each other. I don’t know who you are, but I know that if we try, we can start to reconnect the parts of the world we lost so long ago.

The Vulture guides me. She protects me. I don’t know who your gods are, but I think they protect you too. We can’t be the only ones left. If we could survive out there, in the world, then you could too. My gods are different from Hanna’s gods. And her gods are different from yours, probably.

I know you’re out there. I know it. I can feel it. We’re not the last, and we’re not doomed.

Stay on this frequency. Stay with me. I’ll be waiting to hear from you, and I’m going to play this message on repeat, along with all the others in order, so you can hear them, so you can listen, so you can know what we’ve done, how we got here. How… I got here.. I won’t stop until my words reach someone.

I hope these broadcasts bring you… strength, or something. Hope maybe. I really want someone to answer. I believe that there’s more than just us. I believe in you.

I have to go now. But there’s always going to be someone here, picking up on this frequency and about a range of, uh, five to ten around it. Someone’s always going to -

(sound of footsteps)

ALEXANDRE(A): Charlie. Are you - oh. Sorry.

CHARLIE(C): N-no, I’m almost done. Really.

A: I’ll be back.

C: No! You can stay.

A: You sure?

C: I’d like if you did.

A: ...okay.

C: Over there - yeah, that’s perfect. I’m almost done, like I said. Then we can go.

(sound of clearing throat)

Right. As I was saying: Someone’s always going to be listening. So don’t be afraid to - don’t stay silent. The whole world out there is silent. I’d like to hear something from it, even just once.

Well… that’s all for now. We’ll be here, waiting for you. I - I’m Charlie McAvoy, broadcasting live from KMOX, the voice of what’s left of St. Louis and the rest of America, and if you’re getting this message: know that you, out there, are not alone.

Good luck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there it is. Boy. This ended up a lot longer than I thought it was going to be. But now it's finished.
> 
> Thanks for sticking by for the whole journey, folks. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it; and keep your radios tuned, 'cause I might write more of this world. More of Charlie, maybe, but more of other parts of the country, other stories that people have to tell.
> 
> I'll see you around.


End file.
